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THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 



THE NEW BOOK 
OF MARTYRS 

From the French 
of 

GEORGES DUHAMEL 

BY 

FLORENCE SIMMONDS 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

APR 22 1918 



©CU497044 



•a. «* t 



CONTENTS 

PACE 

THROUGHOUT OUR LAND 9 

THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU ... 12 

MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 42 

THE DEATH OF MERCIER . . . . • . . 96 

VERDUN IOI 

THE SACRIFICE * . . . ^ . . • • • I36 

THE THIRD SYMPHONY ... . . . . 1 63 

GRACE ; 167 

NIGHTS IN ARTOIS . . . . . . . . . 185 



THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 



THE NEW BOOK OF 
MARTYRS 

THROUGHOUT OUR LAND 

FROM the disfigured regions where the 
cannon reigns supreme, to the moun- 
tains of the South, to the ocean, to 
the glittering shores of the inland sea, the cry 
of wounded men echoes throughout the land, 
and a vast kindred cry seems to rise responsive 
from the whole world. 

There is no French town in which the 
wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not 
bleeding. Not one which has not accepted 
the duty of assuaging something of the sum of 
suffering, just as it bears its part in the sum 
of mourning; not one which may not hear 
within its own walls an echo of the greater 
lamentation swelling and muttering where 
the conflict seems to rage unceasingly. The 

9 



10 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

waves of war break upon the whole surface of 
the country, and like the incoming tide, strew 
it with wreckage. 

In the beds which the piety of the public 
has prepared on every side, stricken men 
await the verdict of fate. The beds are white, 
the bandages are spotless; many faces smile 
until the hour when they are flushed with 
fever, and until that same fever makes a 
whole nation of wounded tremble on the 
Continent. 

Some one who had been visiting the wounded 
said to me: "The beds are really very white, 
the dressings are clean, all the patients seem 
to be playing cards, reading the papers, eating 
dainties; they are simple, often very gentle, 
they don't look very unhappy. They all tell 
the same story. . . . The war has not changed 
them much. One can recognise them all." 

Are you sure that you recognise them? You 
have just been looking at them, are you sure 
that you have seen them? 

Under their bandages are wounds you cannot 
imagine. Below the wounds, in the depths of 
the mutilated flesh, a soul, strange and furtive, 
is stirring in feverish exaltation, a soul which 



THROUGHOUT THE LAND 11 

does not readily reveal itself, which expresses 
itself artlessly, but which I would fain make 
you understand. 

In these days, when nothing retains its 
former semblance, all these men are no longer 
those you so lately knew. Suffering has 
roused them from the sleep of gentle life, 
and every day fills them with a terrible in- 
toxication. They are now something more 
than themselves; those we loved were merely 
happy shadows. 

Let us lose none of their humble words, let 
us note their slightest gestures, and tell me, 
tell me that we will think of them together, 
now and later, when we realise the misery 
of the times and the magnitude of their 
sacrifice. 



THE STORY OF CARRE AND 
LERONDEAU 

THEY came in like two parcels dis- 
patched by the same post, two clum- 
sy, squalid parcels, badly packed, 
and damaged in transit. Two human forms 
rolled up in linens and woollens, strapped into 
strange instruments, one of which enclosed the 
whole man, like a coffin of zinc and wire. 

They seemed to be of no particular age ; or 
rather, each might have been a thousand and 
more, the age of swaddled mummies in the 
depths of sarcophagi. 

We washed, combed, and peeled them, and 
laid them very cautiously between clean 
sheets; then we found that one had the look 
of an old man, and that the other was still 

a boy. 

* * * 

Their beds face each other in the same grey 
room. All who enter it notice them at once; 
their infinite misery gives them an air of 
kinship. Compared with them, the other 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 13 

wounded seem well and happy. And in this 
abode of suffering, they are kings; their 
couches are encircled by the respect and si- 
lence due to majesty. 

I approach the younger man and bend over 
him. 

"What is your name?" 

The answer is a murmur accompanied by an 
imploring look. What I hear sounds like : 
Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations. 

It takes me a week to discover that the 
boyish patient is called Marie Lerondeau. 

The bed opposite is less confused. I see a 
little toothless head. From out the ragged 
beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone, 
but touching and almost melodious. The man 
who lies there is called Carre. 



They did not come from the same battle- 
field, but they were hit almost at the same time, 
and they have the same wound. Each has a 
fractured thigh. Chance brought them to- 
gether in the same distant ambulance, where 
their wounds festered side by side. Since then 
they have kept together, till now they lie 



14 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

enfolded by the blue radiance of the Master's 
gaze. 

He looks at both, and shakes his head 
silently; truly, a bad business! He can but 
ask himself which of the two will die first, so 
great are the odds against the survival of 
either. 

The white-bearded man considers them in 
silence, turning in his hand the cunning knife. 

* * * 

We can know nothing till after this grave 
debate. The soul must withdraw, for this is 
not its hour. Now the knife must divide the 
flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work 
completely. 

So the two comrades go to sleep, in. that 
dreadful slumber wherein each man resembles 
his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon 
the struggle. We have laid our grasp upon 
these two bodies; we shall not let them be 
snatched from us easily. 

* * * 

The nausea of the awakening, the sharp 
agony of the first hours are over, and I begin 
to discover my new friends. 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 15 

This requires time and patience. The dress- 
ing hour is propitious. The man lies naked 
on the table. One sees him as a whole, as 
also those great gaping wounds, the objects of 
so many hopes and fears. 

The afternoon is no less favourable to com- 
munion, but that is another matter. Calm 
has come to them, and these two creatures 
have ceased to be nothing but a tortured leg 
and a screaming mouth. 

Carre went ahead at once. He made a 
veritable bound. Whereas Lerondeau seemed 
still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor, 
Carre was already enfolding me in a deep 
afectionate gaze. He said: 

"You must do all that is necessary/' 

Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half 
articulate phrase: 

"Mustn't hurt me." 



As soon as I could distinguish and under- 
stand the boy's words, I called him by his 
Christian name. I would say: 

"How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased 
with you, Marie." 



16 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

This familiarity suits him, as does my use 
of "thee" and "thou" in talking to him. 
He very soon guessed that I speak thus only 
to those who suffer most, and for whom I have 
a special tenderness. So I say to him: "Marie, 
the wound looks very well to-day." And 
every one in the hospital calls him Marie as 
I do. 

When he is not behaving well, I say: 
"Come, be sensible, Lerondeau." 
His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I 
was obliged to try "Monsieur Lerondeau," 
and he was so hurt that I had to retract on 
the spot. However, he now refrains from 
grumbling at his orderly, and screaming too 
loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he 
knows that the day I say to him "Be quiet, 
Monsieur" — -just Monsieur — our relations will 
be exceedingly strained. 



From the first, Carre bore himself like a 
man. When I entered the dressing ward, I 
found the two lying side by side on stretchers 
which had been placed on the floor. Carre's 
emaciated arm emerged from under his 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 17 
blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the 
subject of hope and courage. ... I listened 
to the quavering voice, I looked at the toothless 
face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a curious 
choking in my throat, while Lerondeau blinked 
like a child who is being scolded. Then I 
went out of the room, because this was a 
matter between those two lying on the ground, 
and had nothing to do with me, a robust 
person, standing on my feet. 



Since then, Carre has proved that he had a 
right to preach courage to young Lerondeau. 

While the dressing is being prepared, he lies 
on the ground with the others, waiting his 
turn, and says very little. He looks gravely 
round him, and smiles when his eyes meet 
mine. He is not proud, but he is not one of 
those who are ready to chatter to every one. 
One does not come into this ward to talk, but 
to suffer, and Carre is bracing himself to suffer 
as decently as possible. 

When he is not quite sure of himself, he 
warns me, saying: 

"I am not as strong as usual to-day." 



18 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Nine times out of ten, he is "as strong as 
usual," but he is so thin, so wasted, so reduced 
by his mighty task, that he is sometimes 
obliged to beat a retreat. He does it with 
honour, with dignity. He has just said: "My 
knee is terribly painful," and the sentence 
almost ends in a scream. Then, feeling that 
he is about to howl like the others, Carre 
begins to sing. 

The first time this happened I did not quite 
understand what was going on. He repeated 
the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the 
pain in my knee!" And gradually I became 
aware that this lament was becoming a real 
melody, and for five long minutes Carre im- 
provised a terrible, wonderful, heart-rending 
song on "the pain in his knee." Since then 
this has become a habit, and he begins to sing 
suddenly as soon as he feels that he can no 
longer keep silence. 

Among his improvisations he will introduce 
old airs. I prefer not to look at his face when 
he begins: "II n'est ni beau ni grand mon 
verre." Indeed, I have a good excuse for 
not looking at it, for I am very busy with 
his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 19 
and has to be handled with infinite precau- 
tions. 

I do "all that is necessary," introducing the 
burning tincture of iodine several times. Carre 
feels the sting; and when, passing by his cor- 
ner an hour later, I listen for a moment, I 
hear him slowly chanting in a trembling but 
melodious voice the theme: "He gave me 
tincture of iodine." 



Carre is proud of showing courage. 

This morning he seemed so weak that I tried 
to be as quick as possible and to keep my ears 
shut. But presently a stranger came into the 
ward. Carre turned his head slightly, saw 
the visitor, and frowning, began to sing: 

"II n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre." 

The stranger looked at him with tears in his 
eyes, but the more he looked, the more reso- 
lutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of the 
table with his two quivering hands. 



Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre 
has nothing but black stumps. This distresses 



20 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs 
good teeth. 

Lerondeau is still at death's door, but 
though moribund, he can eat. He attacks his 
meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with 
animal energy, and seems to fasten upon any- 
thing substantial. 

Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; 
but what can he do with his old stumps? 

"Besides," he says, "I was never very car- 



nivorous." 



Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view 
of lying perpetually upon his back, he ar- 
ranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his 
chest; the cigarette ash falls into this, and 
Carre smokes without moving, in cleanly fash- 
ion. 

I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, 
emaciated face, and reflect sadly that it is not 
enough to have the will to live; one must 
have teeth. 



Not every one knows how to suffer, and even 
when we know, we must set about it the right 
way, if we are to come off with honour. As 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 21 

soon as he is on the table, Carre looks round 
him and asks: 

"Isn't there any one to squeeze my head 
to-day?" 

If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously: 

"Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?" 

Then a nurse approaches, takes his head 

between her hands and presses. ... I can 

begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his 

head" Carre is good. 

Lerondeau's method is different. He wants 
some one to hold his hands. When there is 
no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall fall." 
It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid 
table, and that he need not be afraid. He 
gropes about for the helpful hands, and cries, 
the sweat breaking out on his brow: "I know 
I shall fall." Then I get some one to come 
and hold his hands, for suffering, at any rate, 
is a reality. . . . 



Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when 
the dressing is going on. The poor have only 
one, a simple cry that does service for them 
all. It makes one think of the women who, 



22 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

when they are bringing a child into the world, 
repeat, at every pain, the one complaint they 
have adopted. 

Carre has a great many varied cries, and he 
does not say the same thing when the dress- 
ing is removed, and when the forceps are 
applied. 

At the supreme moment he exclaims: "Oh, 
the pain in my knee!" 

Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes 
his head and repeats: 

"Oh, that wretched knee!" 

When it is the turn of the thigh, he is 
exasperated. 

"Now it's this thigh again!" 

And he repeats this incessantly, from second 
to second. Then we go on to the wound 
under his heel, and Carre begins: 

"Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?" 

Finally, when he is tired of singing, he 
murmurs softly and regularly: 

"They don't know how that wretched knee 
hurts me . . . they don't know how it hurts 



me." 



Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a 
little boy compared with Carre, is very poor 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 23 

in the matter of cries. But when he hears his 
friend's complaints, he checks his own cries, 
and borrows them. Accordingly, I hear him 
beginning : 

"Oh, my poor knee ! . . . They don't know 
how it hurts!" 

One morning when he was shouting this at 
the top of his voice, I asked him gravely: 

"Why do you make the same complaints 
as Carre?" 

Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me 
a face that was really offended: 

"It's not true. I don't say the same 
things." 

I said no more, for there are no souls so 
rugged that they cannot feel certain stings. 



Marie has told me the story of his life and 
of his campaign. As he is not very eloquent, 
it was for the most part a confused murmur 
with an ever-recurring protestation: 

"I was a good one to work, you know, 
strong as a horse." 

Yet I can hardly imagine that there was 
once a Marie Lerondeau who was a robust 



24 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
young fellow, standing firm and erect between 
the handles of a plough. I know him only as 
a man lying on his back, and I even find it 
difficult to picture to myself what his shape 
and aspect will be when we get him on his 
feet again. 

Marie did his duty bravely under fire. u He 
stayed alone with the wagons and when he 
was wounded, the Germans kicked him with 
their heavy boots." These are the salient 
points of the interrogatory. 

Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, 
and he looks up to the ceiling, for this takes 
the place of distance and horizon to those who 
lie upon their backs. After a long, light silence, 
he looks at me again, and repeats: 

"I must have been pretty brave to stay alone 
with the wagons!" 

True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I 
take care to let people know it. When 
strangers come in during the dressings, I show 
them Marie, who is making ready to groan, 
and say: 

"This is Marie — Marie Lerondeau, you 
know. He has a fractured thigh, but he is 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 25 

a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with 
the wagons." 

The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and 
Marie controls himself. He blushes a little, 
and the muscles of his neck swell with pride. 
He makes a sign with his eyes as if to say: 
"Yes, indeed, alone, all alone with the wag- 
ons." And meanwhile, the dressing has been 
nearly finished. 

The whole world must know that Marie 
stayed alone with the wagons. I intend to 
pin a report of this on the Government pen- 
sion certificate. 



Carre was only under fire once, and was hit 
almost immediately. He is much annoyed at 
this, for he had a good stock of courage, and 
now he has to waste it within the walls of a 
hospital. 

He advanced through a huge beetroot field, 
and he ran with the others towards a fine 
white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he 
fell! His thigh was fractured. He fell 
among the thick leaves, on the waterlogged 
earth. 



26 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, 
and said to him: 

"We are going back to our trench, they 
shall come and fetch you later." 

Carre merely said: 

"Put my haversack under my head." 

Evening was coming on ; he prepared, grave- 
ly, to spend the night among the beetroots. 
And there he spent it, alone with a cold driz- 
zling rain, meditating seriously until morning. 



It was fortunate that Carre brought such a 
stock of courage into hospital, for he needs it 
all. Successive operations and dressings make 
large drafts upon the most generous supplies. 

They put Carre upon the table, and I note 
an almost joyful resolution in his look. To- 
day he has "all his strength, to the last ounce." 

But just to-day, I have but little to do, not 
much suffering to inflict. He has scarcely 
knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten up 
the apparatus again. 

Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a 
smile, and he exclaims: 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 27 

"Finished already? Put some more ether 
on, make it sting a bit at least." 

Carre knows that the courage of which 
there was no need to-day will not, perhaps, be 
available to-morrow. 



And to-morrow, and for many days after, 
Carre will have to be constantly calling up 
those reserves of the soul which help the body 
to suffer while it waits for the good offices of 
Nature, 

The swimmer adrift on the open seas meas- 
ures his strength, and strives with all his 
muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is 
he to do when there is no land on the 
horizon, and none beyond it? 

This leg, infected to the very marrow, 
seems to be slowly devouring the man to 
whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, 
and the white-haired Master fixes two small 
light-blue eyes upon it, eyes accustomed to 
appraise the things of life, yet, for the mo- 
ment, hesitant. 

I speak to Carre in veiled words of the 
troublesome, gangrenous leg. He gives a 



28 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

toothless laugh, and settles the question at 
once. 

"Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, 
we shall have to get rid of it." 

After this consent, we shall no doubt make 
up our minds to do so. 



Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily 
towards healing. 

Lying on his back, bound up in bandages 
and a zinc trough, and imprisoned by cushions, 
he nevertheless looks like a ship which the 
tide will set afloat at dawn. 

He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to 
say, he seems to get lighter and lighter. 
He is learning not to groan, not because 
his frail soul is gaining strength, but be- 
cause the animal is better fed and more 
robust. 

His ideas of strength of mind are indeed 
very elementary. As soon as I hear his first 
cry, in the warm room where his wound is 
dressed, I give him an encouraging look, and 
say: 

"Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!" 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 29 

Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, 
and asks: 

"Ought I to say 'By God!'?" 

The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered 
leg has been lying has lost its shape; it has 
become oxydised and is split at the edges; 
so I have decided to change it. 

I take it away, look at it, and throw it 
into a corner. Marie follows my movements 
with a scared glance. While I am adjusting 
the new trough, a solid, comfortable one, but 
rather different in appearance, he casts an 
eloquent glance at the discarded one, and his 
eyes fill with copious tears. 

This change is a small matter; but in the 
lives of the sick, there are no small things. 

Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc frag- 
ment for two days, and it will be a long time 
before he ceases to look distrustfully at the 
new trough, and to criticise it in those minute 
and bitter terms which only a connoisseur can 
understand or invent. 



Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed 
in carrying along his body by the generous 



SO THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
impulse of his soul. Everything about him 
save his eyes and his liquid voice foreshadow 
the corpse. Throughout the winter days and 
the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were 
dragging along a derelict. 

He strains at it . . . with his poignant 
songs and his brave words which falter now, 
and often die away in a moan. 

I had to do his dressing in the presence of 
Marie. The amount of work to be got 
through, and the cramped quarters made this 
necessary. Marie was grave and attentive as 
if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, it was 
a lesson in patience and courage. But all at 
once, the teacher broke down. In the middle 
of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in 
spite of himself, began to complain without 
restraint or measure, giving up the struggle 
in despair. 

Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and 
Carre, knowing that Marie was listening, con- 
tinued to lament, like one who has lost all 
sense of shame. 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 31 

Lerondeau called me by a motion of his 
eyelids. He said: 

"Carre! . . ." 

And he added: 

"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad." 

Lerondeau has a good memory for medical 
terms. Yes, he saw Carre's slough. He him- 
self has the like on his posterior and on his 
heel; but the tear that trembles in the corner 
of his eye is certainly for Carre. 

And then, he knows, he feels that his wounds 
are going to heal. 



But it is bad for Marie to hear another 
complaining before his own turn. 

He comes to the table very ill-disposed. 
His nerves have been shaken and are un- 
usually irritable. 

At the first movement, he begins with sighs 
and those "Poor devils I" which are his art- 
less and habitual expressions of self-pity. And 
then, all at once, he begins to scream, as 
I had not heard him scream for a long time. 
He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening 
his mouth widely, and shrieking with all 



82 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

the strength of his lungs, and with all the 
strength of his face, it would seem, for it is 
flushed and bathed in sweat. He screams 
unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an in- 
coherent and disorderly fashion. 

Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with 
gentle and compassionate words, I raise my 
voice suddenly and order the boy to be quiet, 
in a severe tone that admits of no parley- 
ing. . . . 

Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a 
bubble at the touch of a finger. The ward 
still rings with my imperious order. A good 
lady who does not understand at once, stares 
at me in stupefaction. 

But Marie, red and frightened, controls his 
unreasonable emotion. And as long as the 
dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously 
to prevent him from suffering in vain, just 
as others hold and grasp his wrists. 

Then, presently, it is all over. I give him 
a fraternal smile that relaxes the tension of his 
brow as a bow is unbent. 

* * * 

A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU S3 

to visit the wounded. She exhaled such a 
strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have 
distinguished the odour of suffering that per- 
vades this place. 

Carre was shown to her as one of the most 
interesting specimens of the house. She looked 
at him with a curious, faded smile, which, 
thanks to paint and powder, still had a cer- 
tain beauty. 

She made some patriotic remarks to Carre 
full of allusions to his conduct under fire. 
And Carre ceased staring out of the window 
to look at the lady with eyes full of respectful 
astonishment. 

And then she asked Carre what she could 
send him that he would like, with a gesture 
that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the earth 
and the glory of them. 

Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; 
he considered for a moment and then said 
modestly: 

"A little bit of veal with new potatoes." 

The handsome lady thought it tactful to 
laugh. And I felt instinctively that her in- 
terest in Carre was suddenly quenched. 



34 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

An old man sometimes comes to visit 
Carre. He stops before the bed, and with a 
stony face pronounces words full of an over- 
flowing benevolence. 

"Give him anything he asks for. . . . Send 
a telegram to his family." 

Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? 
I have no one but my poor old mother; it 
would frighten her." 

The little old gentleman emerges from his 
varnished boots like a variegated plant from 
a double vase. 

Carre coughs — first, to keep himself in 
countenance, and, secondly, because his cruel 
bronchitis takes this opportunity to give him 
a shaking. 

Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his 
medals hang out from his tunic like little 
dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing 
and pouting, without removing his gold- 
trimmed kepi, and lays a deaf ear on Carre's 
chest with an air of authority. 

Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole 
limb has gone, leaving a huge and dreadful 
wound level with the trunk. 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 35 

It is very surprising that the rest of Carre 
did not go with the leg. 

He had a pretty hard day. 

O life! O soul! How you cling to this 
battered carcase! O little gleam on the 
surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it 
die down and kindle again. And it seemed 
too suffering, too weak, too despairing ever 
to reflect anything again save suffering, weak- 
ness, and despair. 



During the long afternoon, I go and sit 
between two beds beside Lerondeau. I offer 
him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that 
we say nothing, or very little. . . . But it is 
not necessary to speak when one has a talk 
with Lerondeau. 

Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what 
he likes still better is that I should come and 
sit by him for a bit. When I pass through 
the ward, he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, 
as one taps upon a bench to invite a friend to 
a seat. 

Since he told me about his life at home and 
his campaign, he has not found much to say 



36 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

to me. He takes the cakes with which his 
little shelf is laden, and crunches them with 
an air of enjoyment. 

"As for me," he says, "I just eat all the 
time," and he laughs. 

If he stops eating to smoke, he laughs again. 
Then there is an agreeable silence. Marie 
looks at me, and begins to laugh again. And 
when I get up to go, he says: u Oh, you are 
not in such a great hurry, we can chat a 
little longer!" 



Lerondeau's leg was such a bad business 
that it is now permanently shorter than the 
other by a good twelve centimetres. So at 
least it seems to us, looking down on it from 
above. 

But Lerondeau, who has only seen it from 
afar by raising his head a little above the 
table while his wounds are being dressed, has 
noticed only a very slight difference in length 
between his two legs. 

He said philosophically: 

"It is shorter, but with a good thick 
sole. . . ." 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 37 

When Marie was better, he raised himself 
on his elbow, and he understood the extent 
of his injury more clearly. 

"I shall want a very thick sole," he re- 
marked. 

Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can 
estimate the extent of the damage from 
above; but he is happy to feel life welling 
up once more in him, and he concludes gaily: 

"What I shall want is not a sole, but a 
little bench." 



But Carre is ill, terribly ill. 

That valiant soul of his seems destined to 
be left alone, for all else is failing. 

He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and 
swollen. 

He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one 
of them is covered with abscesses. 

The joy of breathing no longer exists for 
Carre, for his cough shakes him savagely in 
his bed. 

The back, by means of which we rest, has 
also betrayed him. Here and there it is 
ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie 



38 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

perpetually on his back, but only to lie and 
sleep on it after a day of toil. 

For man was not really intended to suffer 
with his miserable, faithless body! 

And his heart beats laboriously. 

There was mischief in the bowel too. So 
much so, that one day Carre was unable to 
control himself, before a good many people 
who had come in. 

In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly 
assurances, Carre was so ashamed that he 
wept. He who always said that a man ought 
not to cry, he who never shed a tear in the 
most atrocious suffering, sobbed with shame 
on account of this accident. And I could not 
console him. 



He no longer listens to all we say to him. 
He no longer answers our questions. He has 
mysterious fits of absence. 

He who was so dignified in his language, 
expresses himself and complains with the words 
of a child. 

Sometimes he comes up out of the depths 
and speaks. 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 39 

He talks of death with an imaginative 
lucidity which sounds like actual experi- 
ence. 

Sometimes he sees it. . . . And as he gazes, 
his pupils suddenly distend. 

But he will not, he cannot make up his 
mind. . . . 

He wants to suffer a little longer. 

I draw near to his bed in the gathering 
darkness. His breathing is so light that sud- 
denly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of 
anxiety. 

Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes. 

Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles 
and says: 

"What white teeth you have!" 

Then he dreams, as if he were dying. 



Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, 
my brother, when you were driving- the plough 
into your little plot of brown earth? 

Here you are, enduring a death-agony of 
five months swathed in these livid wrappings, 
without even the rewards that are given to 
others. 



40 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Your breast, your shroud must be bare of 
even the humblest of the rewards of valour, 
Carre. 

It was written that you should suffer with- 
out purpose and without hope. 

But I will not let all your sufferings be lost 
in the abyss. And so I record them thus at 
length. 



Lerondeau has been brought down into the 
garden. I find him there, stretched out on a 
cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over 
his eyes, to shade them from the first spring 
sunshine. 

He talks a little, smokes a good deal, and 
laughs more. 

I look at his leg, but he hardly ever looks 
at it himself; he no longer feels it. 

He will forget it even more utterly after a 
while, and he will live as if it were natural 
enough for a man to live with a stiff, distorted 
limb. 

Forget your leg, forget your sufferings, 
Lerondeau. But the world must not forget 
them. 



STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU 41 

And I leave Marie sitting in the sun, with 

a fine new pink colour in his freckled cheeks. 



Carre died early this morning. Lerondeau 
leaves us to-morrow. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 



WERE modesty banished from the 
rest of the earth, it would no 
doubt find a refuge in Mouchon's 
heart. 

I see him still as he arrived, on a stretcher 
full of little pebbles, with his mud be-plastered 
coat, and his handsome, honest face, like that 
of a well-behaved child. 

"You must excuse me," he said; "we can't 
keep ourselves very clean," 

"Have you any lice?" asks the orderly, as 
he undresses him. 

Mouchon flushes and looks uneasy. 

"Well, if I have, they don't really belong 
to me." 

He has none, but he has a broken leg, "due 
to a torpedo." 

The orderly cuts open his trouser, and I 
tell him to take off the boot. Mouchon puts 
out his hand, and says diffidently: 

42 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 43 

"Never mind the boot." 

"But, my good fellow, we can't dress your 
leg without taking off your boot." 

Then Mouchon, red and confused, objects: 

"But if you take off the boot, I'm afraid 
my foot will smell. . . ." 

I have often thought of this answer. And 
believe me, Mouchon, I have not yet met the 
prince who is worthy to take off your boots 
and wash your humble feet. 

II 

With his forceps the doctor lays hold care- 
fully of a mass of bloody dressings, and draws 
them gently out of a gaping wound in the 
abdomen. A ray of sunshine lights him at 
his work, and the whole of the frail shed 
trembles to the roar of the cannon. 

"I am a big china-dealer," murmurs the 
patient. "You come from Paris, and I do, 
too. Save me, and you shall see. . . . I'll 
give you a fine piece of china." 

The plugs are coming out by degrees; 
the forceps glitter, and the ray of sunshine 
seems to tremble under the cannonade, as 



44 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

do the floor, the walls, the light roof, the 

whole earth, the whole universe, drunk with 

fatigue. 

Suddenly, from the depths of space, a 
whining sound arises, swells, rends the air 
above the shed, and the shell bursts a few 
yards off, with the sound of a cracked object 
breaking. 

The thin walls seem to quiver under the 
pressure of the air. The doctor makes a 
slight movement of his head, as if to see, 
after all, where the thing fell. 

Then the china-dealer, who noted the move- 
ment, says in a quiet voice: 

"Don't take any notice of those small 
things, they don't do any harm. Only save 
me, and I will give you a beautiful piece of 
china or earthenware, whichever you like." 

Ill 

The root of the evil is not so much the 
shattered leg, as the little wound in the arm, 
from which so much good blood was lost. 

With his livid lips, no longer distinguishable 
from the rest of his face, and the immense 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 45 

black pupils of his eyes, the man shows 
a countenance irradiated by a steadfast soul, 
which will not give in till the last mo- 
ment. He contemplates the ravages of 
his body almost severely, and without il- 
lusion, and watching the surgeons as 
they scrub their hands, he says in a grave 
voice : 

"Tell my wife that my last thoughts were 
of her and our children." 

Ah! it was not a veiled question, for, 
without a moment's hesitation, he allows us 
to put the mask over his face. 

The solemn words seem still to echo through 
the ward: 

"Tell my wife . . ." 

That manly face is not the face of one who 
could be deceived by soft words and consoling 
phrases. The white blouse turns away. The 
surgeon's eyes grow dim behind his spectacles, 
and in solemn tones he replies: 

"We will not fail to do so, friend.'' 

The patient's eyelids flutter — as one waves 
a handkerchief from the deck of a departing 
steamer — then, breathing in the ether steadily, 
he falls into a dark slumber. 



46 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

He never wakes, and we keep our promise 
to him. 

IV 

A few days before the death of Tricot, a 
very annoying thing happened to him; a 
small excrescence, a kind of pimpel, appeared 
on the side of his nose. 

Tricot had suffered greatly; only some 
fragments of his hands remained; but, above 
all, he had a great opening in his side, a kind 
of fetid mouth, through which the will to live 
seemed to evaporate. 

Coughing, spitting, looking about with wide, 
agonised eyes in search of elusive breath, 
having no hands to scratch oneself with, 
being unable to eat unaided, and further, 
never having the smallest desire to eat — 
could this be called living? And yet Tricot 
never gave in. He waged his own war with 
the divine patience of a man who had waged 
the great world war, and who knows that 
victory will not come right away. 

But Tricot had neither allies nor reserves; 
he was all alone, so wasted and so exhausted 
that the day came when he passed almost 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 47 
imperceptibly from the state of a wounded to 
that of a dying man. 

And it was just at this moment that ths 
pimple appeared. 

Tricot had borne the greatest sufferings cour- 
ageously; but he seemed to have no strength to 
bear this slight addition to his woes. 

"Monsieur," stammered the orderly who 
had charge of him, utterly dejected, "I tell 
you, that pimple is the spark that makes the 
cup overflow." 

And in truth the cup overflowed. This 
misfortune was too much. Tricot began to 
complain, and from that moment I felt that 
he was doomed. 

I asked him several times a day, thinking of 
all his wounds: "How are you, old fellow?" 
And he, thinking of nothing but the pimple, 
answered always: 

"Very bad, very bad! The pimple is get- 
ting bigger." 

It was true. The pimple had come to a 
head, and I wanted to prick it. 

Tricot, who had allowed us to cut into his 
chest without an anaesthetic, exclaimed with 
tears : 



48 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"No, no more operations! I won't have 
any more operations." 

All day long he lamented about his pimple, 
and the following night he, died. 

"It was a bad pimple," said the orderly; 
"it was that which killed him." 

Alas! It was not a very "bad pimple," 
but no doubt it killed him. 



Mehay was nearly killed, but he did not 
die; so no great harm was done. 

The bullet went through his helmet, and 
only touched the bone. The brain is all right. 
So much the better. 

No sooner had Mehay come to, and hic- 
coughed a little in memory of the chloroform, 
than he began to look round with interest at 
all that was happening about him. 

Three days after the operation, Mehay got 
up. It would have been useless to forbid this 
proceeding. Mehay would have disobeyed 
orders for the first time in his life. We could 
not even think of taking away his clothes. 
The brave man never lacks clothes. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 4,9 

Mehay accordingly got up, and his illness 
was a thing of the past. 

Every morning, Mehay rises before day- 
break and seizes a broom. Rapidly and 
thoroughly, he makes the ward as clean as 
his own heart. He never forgets any corner, 
and he manages to pass the brush gently 
under the beds without waking his sleeping 
comrades, and without disturbing those who 
are in pain. Sometimes Mehay hands basins 
or towels, and he is as gentle as a woman 
when he helps to dress Vossaert, whose limbs 
are numb and painful. 

At eight o'clock, the ward is in perfect order, 
and as the dressings are about to begin, Mehay 
suddenly appears in a fine clean apron. He 
watches my hands carefully as they come and 
go, and he is always in the right place to 
hand the dressing to the forceps, to pour out 
the spirit, or to lend a hand with a bandage, 
for he very soon learned to bandage skilfully. 

He does not say a word; he just looks. The 
bit of his forehead that shows under his own 
bandages is wrinkled with the earnestness of 
his attention — and he has those blue marks 
by which we recognise the miner. 



50 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Sometimes it is his turn to have a dress- 
ing. But scarcely is it completed when he is 
up again with his apron before him, si- 
lently busy. 

At eleven o'clock, Mehay disappears. He 
has gone, perhaps, to get a breath of fresh 
air? Oh, no! Here he is back again with a 
trayful of bowls. And he hands round the 
soup. 

In the evening he hands the thermometer. 
He helps the orderlies so much that he leaves 
them very little to do. 

All this time the bones of his skull are at 
work under his bandages, and the red flesh is 
growing. But we are not to trouble about 
that: it will manage all alone. The man, 
however, cannot be idle. He works, and 
trusts to his blood, "which is healthy." 

In the evening, when the ward is lighted by 
a night-light, and I come in on tiptoe to give 
a last look round, I hear a voice laboriously 
spelling: "B-O, Bo; B-I, Bi; N-E, Ne, 
Bobine." It is Mehay, learning to read before 
going to bed. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 51 



VI 

A lamp has been left alight, because the men 
are not asleep yet, and they are allowed to 
smoke for a while. It would be no fun to 
smoke, unless one could see the smoke. 

The former bedroom of the mistress of the 
house makes a very light, very clean ward. 
Under the draperies which have been fastened 
up to the ceiling and covered with sheets, old 
Louarn lies motionless, waiting for his three 
shattered limbs to mend. He is smoking a 
cigarette, the ash from which falls upon his 
breast. Apologising for the little heaps of 
dirt that make his bed the despair of the 
orderlies, he says to me: 

"You know, a Breton ought to be a bit 
dirty." 

I touch the weight attached to his thigh, and 
he exclaims : 

"Ma doue! Ma doue! Caste! Caste!" 

These are oaths of a kind, of his own 
coining, which make every one laugh, and 
himself the first. He adds, as he does every 
day: 



52 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"Doctor, you never hurt me so much before 
as you have done this time." 

Then he laughs again. 

Lens is not asleep yet, but he is as silent as 
usual. He has scarcely uttered twenty words 
in three weeks. 

In a corner, Mehay patiently repeats: 
"P-A, Pa," and the orderly who is teaching 
him to read presses his forefinger on the soiled 
page. 

I make my way towards Croin, Octave. I 
sit down by the bed in silence. 

Croin turns a face half hidden by bandages 
to me, and puts a leg damp with sweat out 
from under the blankets, for fever runs high 
just at this time. He too, is silent; he knows 
as well as I do that he is not going on well; 
but all the same, he hopes I shall go away 
without speaking to him. 

No. I must tell him. I bend over him and 
murmur certain things. 

He listens, and his chin begins to tremble, 
his boyish chin, which is covered with a soft, 
fair down. 

Then, with the accent of his province, he 
says in a tearful, hesitating voice : 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 53 

"I have already given an eye, must I give 
a hand too?" 

His one remaining eye fills with tears. And 
seeing the sound hand, I press it gently before 
I go. 

VII 

When I put my fingers near his injured eye, 
Croin recoils a little. 

"Don't be afraid," I say to him. 

"Oh, I'm not afraid!" 

And he adds proudly: 

"When a chap has lived on Hill 108, he 
can't ever be afraid of anything again." 

"Then why do you wince?" 

"It's just my head moving back of its own 
accord. I never think of it." 

And it is true; the man is not afraid, but 
his flesh recoils. 

When the bandage is properly adjusted, 
what remains visible of Croin's face is young, 
agreeable, charming. I note this with satis- 
faction, and say to him: 

"There's not much damage done on this 
side. We'll patch you up so well that you 
will still be able to make conquests." 



54 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

He smiles, touches his bandage, looks at his 
mutilated arm, seems to lose himself for a 
while in memories, and murmurs: 

"May be. But the girls will never come 
after me again as they used to. . . ." 

VIII 

"The skin is beginning to form over the 
new flesh. A few weeks more, and then a 
wooden leg. You will run along like a rabbit." 

Plaquet essays a little dry laugh which 
means neither yes nor no, but which reveals a 
great timidity, and something else, a great 
anxiety. 

"For Sundays, you can have an artificial 
leg. You put a boot on it. The trouser hides 
it all. It won't show a bit." 

The wounded man shakes his head slightly, 
and listens with a gentle, incredulous smile. 

"With an artificial leg, Plaquet, you will, 
of course, be able to go out. It will be almost 
as it was before." 

Plaquet shakes his head again, and says in a 
low voice: 

"Oh, I shall never go out!" 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 55 

"But with a good artificial leg, Plaquet, you 
will be able to walk almost as well as before. 
Why shouldn't you go out?" 

Plaquet hesitates and remains silent. 
"Why?" 

Then in an almost inaudible voice he re- 
plies: 

"I will never go out. I should be ashamed." 

Plaquet will wear a medal on his breast. He 

is a brave soldier, and by no means a fool. 

But there are very complex feelings which we 

must not judge too hastily. 

IX 

In the corner of the ward there is a little 
plank bed which is like all the other little 
beds. But buried between its sheets there is 
the smile of Mathouillet, which is like no 
other smile. 

Mathouillet, after throwing a good many 
bombs, at last got one himself. In this 
disastrous adventure, he lost part of his 
thigh, received several wounds, and gradually 
became deaf. Such is the fate of bombardier- 
grenadier Mathouillet. 



56 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

The bombardier-grenadier has a gentle, 
beardless face, which for many weeks must 
have expressed great suffering, and which is 
now beginning to show a little satisfaction. 

But Mathouillet hears so badly that when 
one speaks to him he only smiles in answer. 

If I come into the ward, Mathouillet' s 
smile awaits and welcomes me. When the 
dressing is over, Mathouillet thanks me with 
a smile. If I look at the temperature chart, 
Mathouillet's smile follows me, but not ques- 
tioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but 
his smile says a number of unspoken things 
that I understand perfectly. Conversation is 
difficult, on account of this unfortunate deaf- 
ness — that is to say, conversation as usually 
carried on. But we two, happily, have no 
need of words. For some time past, certain 
smiles have been enough for us. And Mathouil- 
let smiles, not only with his eyes or with his 
lips, but with his nose, his beardless chin, his 
broad, smooth forehead, crowned by the pale 
hair of the North, with all his gentle, boyish 
face. 

Now that Mathouillet can get up, he eats 
at the table, with his comrades. To call him 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 5% 

to meals, Baraffe utters a piercing cry, which 
reaches the ear of the bombardier-grena- 
dier. 

He arrives, shuffling his slippers along the 
floor, and examines all the laughing faces. As 
he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, and 
this time his smile betrays embarrassment and 
confusion. 

Coming very close to him, I say loudly: 

"Your comrades are calling you to dinner, 
my boy." 

"Yes, yes," he replies, "but because they 
know I am deaf, they sometimes try to play 
tricks on me." 

His cheeks flush warmly as he makes this 
impromptu confidence. Then he makes up his 
mind to sit down, after interrogating me with 
his most affectionate smile. 



X 

Once upon a time, Paga would have been 
called un type; now he is un numero. This 
means that he is an original, that his ways of 
considering and practising life are unusual; 
and as life here is reduced entirely to terms of 



58 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

suffering, it means that his manner of suffering 
differs from that of other people. 

From the very beginning, during those hard 
moments when the wounded man lies plunged 
in stupor and self-forgetfulness, Paga distin- 
guished himself by some remarkable eccen- 
tricities. 

Left leg broken, right foot injured, such was 
the report on Paga's hospital sheet. 

Now the leg was not doing at all well. 
Every morning, the good head doctor stared 
at the swollen flesh with his little round dis- 
coloured eyes and said: "Come, we must just 
wait till to-morrow." 

But Paga did not want to wait 

Flushed with fever, his hands trembling, his 
southern accent exaggerated by approaching 
delirium, he said, as soon as we came to see 
him. 

"My wish, my wish! You know my wish, 
doctor." 

Then, lower, with a kind of passion : 

"I want you to cut it off, you know. I 
want you to cut this leg. Oh! I shan't be 
happy till it is done. Doctor, cut it, cut it 
off." 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 59 

We didn't cut it at all, and Paga's business 
was very successfully arranged. I even feel 
sure that this leg became quite a respectable 
limb again. 

I am bound to say Paga understood that he 
had meddled with things which did not con- 
cern him. He nevertheless continued to offer 
imperative advice as to the manner in which 
he wished to be nursed. 

"Don't pull off the dressings! I won't 
have it. Do you hear, doctor? Don't pull. 
I won't have it." 

Then he would begin to tremble nervously 
all over his body and to say: 

U J am quite calm! Oh, I am really calm. 
See, Michelet, see, Brugneau, I am calm. Doc- 
tor, see, I am quite calm." 

Meantime the dressings were gradually 
loosening under a trickle of water, and Paga 
muttered between his teeth: 

"He's pulling, he's pulling. . . . Oh, the 
cruel man! I won't have it, I won't have it." 

Then suddenly, with flaming cheeks: 

"That's right. That's right! See, Michelet, 
see, Brugneau: the dressings have come away. 
Sergeant, Sergeant, the dressings are loosened." 



60 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

He clapped his hands, possessed by a fur- 
tive joy; then he suddenly became conscious, 
and with a deep furrow between his brows, he 
began to give orders again. 

"Not any tincture of iodine to-day, doctor. 
Take away those forceps, doctor, take them 
away." 

Meanwhile the implacable forceps did their 
work, the tincture of iodine performed its 
chilly function; then Paga yelled: 

"Quickly, quickly. Kiss me, kiss me." 

With his arms thrown out like tentacles, he 
beat upon the air, and seized haphazard upon 
the first blouse that passed. Then he would 
embrace it frantically. 

Thus it happened that he once showered 
kisses on Michelet's hands, objects by no 
means suitable for such a demonstration. 
Michelet said, laughing: 

"Come, stop it; my hands are dirty." 

And then poor Paga began to kiss Michelet's 
bare, hairy arms, saying distractedly: 

"If your hands are dirty, your arms are all 
right." 

Alas, what has become of all those who, 
during days and nights of patient labour, I 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 61 

saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of 
the night and coming back again to joy? What 
has become of the smouldering faggot which 
an ardent breath finally kindled into flame? 

What became of you, precious lives, poor 
wonderful souls, for whom I fought so many 
obscure great battles, and who went off again 
into the realm of adventure? 

You, Paga, little fellow, where are you? Do 
you remember the time when I used to dress 
your two wounds alternately, and when you 
said to me with great severity: 

"The leg to-day, only the leg. It's not the 
day for the foot." 

XI 

Sergeant Lecolle is distinguished by a huge 
black beard, which fails to give a ferocious 
expression to the gentlest face in the world. 

He arrived the day little Delporte died, and 
scarcely had he emerged from the dark sleep 
when, opening his eyes, he saw Delporte die. 

I went to speak to him several times. He 
looked so exhausted, his black beard was so 
mournful that I kept on telling him: "Ser- 
geant, your wound is not serious." 



62 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Each time he shook his head as if to say 
that he took but little interest in the matter, 
and tried to close his eyes. 

Lecolle is too nervous; he was not able to 
close his eyes, and he saw Delporte dead, and 
he had been obliged to witness all Delporte's 
death agony; for when one has a wound in 
the right shoulder, one can only lie upon the 
left shoulder. 

The ward was full, I could not change the 
sergeant's place, and yet I should have liked 
to let him be alone all day with his own pain. 

Now Lecolle is better; he feels better 
without much exuberance, with a seriousness 
which knows and foresees the bufferings of 
Fate. 

Lecolle was a stenographer "in life." We 
are no longer "in life," but the good stenog- 
rapher retains his principles. When his wounds 
are dressed, he looks carefully at the little 
watch on his wrist. 

He moans at intervals, and stops suddenly 
to say: 

"It has taken fifty seconds to-day to loosen 
the dressings. Yesterday, you took sixty-two 
seconds." 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 63 

His first words after the operation were : 
"Will you please tell me how many minutes 
I was unconscious?" 

XII 

I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining 
the chapel. A band of crippled men, returning 
from Germany after a long captivity, had just 
been brought in there. 

There were some fifty of them, all looking 
with delighted eyes at the walls, the benches, 
the telephone, all the modest objects in this 
waiting-room, objects which are so much more 
attractive under the light of France than in 
harsh exile. 

The waiting-room seemed to have been 
transformed into a museum of misery: there 
were blind men, legless and armless men, 
paralysed men, their faces ravaged by fire and 
powder. 

A big fellow said, lifting his deformed arm 
with an effort* 

"I tricked them; they thought to the end 
that I was really paralysed. I look well, but 
that's because they sent us to Constance for 
the last week, to fatten us up." 



64 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

A dark, thin man was walking to and fro, 
towing his useless foot after him by the help 
of a string which ran down his trouser leg; 
and he laughed: 

"I walk more with my fist than with my 
foot. Gentlemen, gentlemen, who would like 
to pull Punch's string?" 

All wore strange costumes, made up of mil- 
itary clothing and patched civilian garments. 

On a bench sat fifteen or twenty men with 
about a dozen legs between them. It was 
among these that I saw Derancourt. He 
was holding his crutches in one hand and 
looking round him, stroking his long fair 
moustache absently. 

Derancourt became my friend. 

His leg had been cut off at the thigh, and 
this had not yet healed; he had, further, a 
number of other wounds which had closed 
more or less during his captivity. 

Derancourt never talked of himself, much 
less of his misfortune. I knew from his com- 
rades that he had fought near Longwy, his 
native town, and that he had lain grievously 
wounded for nine days on the battlefield. He 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 65 

had seen his father, who had come to succour 
him, killed at his side; then he had lain 
beside the corpse, tortured by a delirious 
dream in which nine days and nine nights 
had followed one upon the other, like a dizzi- 
ness of alternate darkness and dazzling light. 
In the mornings, he sucked the wet grass 
he clutched when he stretched out his 
hands. 

Afterwards he had suffered in Germany, 
and finally he had come back to France, 
mutilated, covered with wounds, and knowing 
that his wife and children were left without 
help and without resources in the invaded 
territory. 

Of all this Derancourt said not a word. He 
apparently did not know how to complain, and 
he contemplated the surrounding wretched- 
ness with a grave look, full of experience, 
which would have seemed a little cold but 
for the tremulous mobility of his features. 

Derancourt never played, never laughed. 
He sought solitude, and spent hours, turning 
his head slowly from side to side, contemplat- 
ing the walls and the ceiling like one who 
sees things within himself. 



66 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

The day came when we had to operate on 
Derancourt, to make his stump of a thigh 
serviceable. 

He was laid on the table. He remained 
calm and self-controlled as always, looking at 
the preparations for the operation with a kind 
of indifference. 

We put the chloroform pad under his nose ; 
he drew two or three deep breaths, and then 
a strange thing happened: Derancourt began 
to sob in a terrible manner, and to talk of 
all those things he had never mentioned. 
The grief he had suppressed for months over- 
flowed, or rather, rushed out in desperate, 
heartrending lamentations. 

It was not the disorderly intoxication, the 
muscular, animal rebellion of those who are 
thrown into this artificial sleep. It was the 
sudden break-up of an overstrained will under 
a slight shock. For months Derancourt had 
braced himself against despair, and now, all 
of a sudden, he gave way, and abandoned 
himself to poignant words and tears. The 
flood withdrew suddenly, leaving the horrible, 
chaotic depths beneath the sea visible. 

We ceased scrubbing our hands, and stood 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 67 

aghast and deeply moved, full of sadness and 
respect. 

Then some one exclaimed: 

"Quick! quick! More chloroform ! Stupefy 
him outright, let him sleep." 

XIII 

"But a man can't be paralysed by a little 
hole in his back! I tell you it was only a 
bullet. You must take it out, doctor. Take 
it out, and I shall be all right." 

Thus said a Zouave, who had been lying 
helpless for three days on his bed. 

"If you knew how strong I am! Look at 
my arms! No one could unhook a bag like 
me, and heave it over my shoulder — tock! 
A hundred kilos — with one jerk!" 

The doctor looked at the muscular torso, 
and his face expressed pity, regret, embarrass- 
ment, and, perhaps, a certain wish to go 
away. 

"But this wretched bullet prevents me from 
moving my legs. You must take it out, doc- 
tor, you must take it out!" 

The doctor glances at the paralysed legs, 



68 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

and the swollen belly, already lifeless. He 
knows that the bullet broke the spine, 
and cut through the marrow which sent 
law and order into all this now inanimate 
flesh. 

"Operate, doctor. Look you, a healthy chap 
like me would soon get well." 

The doctor stammers vague sentences: the 
operation would be too serious for the present 
. . . better wait. . . . 

"No, no. Never fear. My health is first- 
rate. Don't be afraid, the operation is bound 
to be a success." 

His rugged face is contracted by his fixed 
idea. His voice softens; blind confidence and 
supplication give it an unusual tone. His 
heavy eyebrows meet and mingle under the 
stress of his indomitable will; his soul makes 
such an effort that the immobility of his legs 
seems suddenly intolerable. Heavens! Can 
a man will so intensely, and yet be powerless 
to control his own body? 

"Oh, operate, operate! You will see how 
pleased I shall be!" 

The doctor twists the sheet round his fore- 
finger; then, hearing a wounded man groan- 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 69 

ing in the next ward, he gets up, says he will 
come back presently, and escapes. 

XIV 

The colloquy between the rival gods took 
place at the foot of the great staircase. 

The Arab soldier had just died. It was the 
Arab one used to see under a shed, seated 
gravely on the ground in the midst of other 
magnificent Arabs. In those days they had 
boots of crimson leather, and majestic red 
mantles. They used to sit in a circle, contem- 
plating from under their turbans the vast 
expanse of mud watered by the skies of 
Artois. To-day, they wear the ochre helmet, 
and show the profiles of Saracen warriors. 

The Algerian has just been killed, kicked 
in the belly by his beautiful white horse. 

In the ambulance there was a Mussulman 
orderly, a well-to-do tradesman, who had vol- 
unteered for the work. He, on the other 
hand, was extremely European, nay, Parisian; 
but a plump, malicious smile showed itself in 
the midst of his crisp grey beard, and he had 
the look in the eyes peculiar to those who 



70 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

come from the other side of the Mediter- 
ranean. 

Rashid "behaved very well." He had 
found native words when tending the dying 
man, and had lavished on him the consolations 
necessary to those of his country. 

When the Algerian was dead, he arranged 
the winding-sheet himself, in his own fashion; 
then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in 
search of Monet and Renaud. 

For lack of space, we had no mortuary at 
the time in the ambulance. Corpses were 
placed in the chapel of the cemetery while 
awaiting burial. The military burial-ground 
had been established within the precincts of 
the church, close by the civilian cemetery, and 
in a few weeks it had invaded it like a cancer 
and threatened to devour it. 

Rashid had thought of everything, and this 
was why he went in search of Monet and 
Renaud, Catholic priests and ambulance order- 
lies of the second class. 

The meeting took place at the foot of the 
great staircase. Leaning over the balustrade, 
I listened, and watched the colloquy of the 
rival gods. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 71 

Monet was thirty years old; he had fine, 
sombre eyes, and a stiff beard, from which 
a pipe emerged. Renaud carried the thin 
face of a seminarist a little on one side. 

Monet and Renaud listened gravely, as be- 
came people who were deciding in the Name 
of the Father. Rashid was pleading for his 
dead Arab with supple eloquence, wrapped in 
a cloud of tobacco-smoke: 

"We cannot leave the Arab's corpse under 
a wagon, in the storm. . . . This man died 
for France, at his post. . . . He had a right 
to all honours, and it was hard enough as it 
was that he could not have the obsequies he 
would surely have had in his own country." 

Monet nodded approvingly, and Renaud, his 
mouth half open, was seeking some formula. 

It came, and this was it: 

"Very well, Monsieur Rashid, take him into 
the church; that is God's house for every one." 

Rashid bowed with perfect deference, and 
went back to his dead. 

Oh, he arranged everything very well! He 
had made this funeral a personal matter. He 
was the family, the master of the ceremonies, 
almost the priest. 



72 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

The Algerian's body accordingly lay in the 
chapel, covered with the old faded flag and 
a handful of chrysanthemums. 

It was here the bearers came to take it, 
and carry it to consecrated ground, to lie 
among the other comrades. 

Monet and Renaud were with us when it 
was lowered into the grave. Rashid repre- 
sented the dead man's kindred with much 
dignity. He held something in his hand 
which he planted in the ground before going 
away. It was that crescent of plain deal at 
the end of a stick which is still to be seen in 
the midst of the worm-eaten crosses, in the 
shadow of the belfry of L . 

There the same decay works towards the 
intermingling and the reconciliation of ancient 
symbols and ancient dogmas. 



XV 

Nogue is courageous, but Norman; this 
gives to courage a special form, which excludes 
neither reserve, nor prudence, nor moderation 
of language. 

On the day when he was wounded, he bore 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 73 

a preliminary operation with perfect calm. 
Lifting up his shattered arm, I said: 

"Are you suffering very much?" And he 
barely opened his lips to reply: 

"Well . . . perhaps a bit." 

Fever came the following days, and with it 
a certain discomfort. Nogue could not eat, 
and when asked if he did not feel rather 
hungry, he shook his head: 

"I don't think so." 

Well, the arm was broken very high up, 
the wound looked unhealthy, the fever ran 
high, and we made up our minds that it was 
necessary to come to a decision. 

"My poor Nogue," I said, "we really can't 
do anything with that arm of yours. Be 
sensible. Let us take it off." 

If we had waited for his answer, Nogue 
would have been dead by now. His face 
expressed great dissatisfaction, but he said 
neither yes nor no. 

"Don't be afraid, Nogue. I will guarantee 
the success of the operation." 

Then he asked to make his will. When 
the will had been made, Nogue was laid 
upon the table and operated upon, with- 



74 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

out having formulated either consent or re- 
fusal. 

When the first dressing was made, Nogue 
looked at his bleeding shoulder, and said: 

"I suppose you couldn't have managed to 
leave just a little bit of arm?" 

After a few days the patient was able to 
sit up in an arm-chair. His whole being bore 
witness to a positive resurrection, but his 
tongue remained cautious. 

"Well, now, you see, you're getting on 
capitally." 

"Hum . . . might be better." 

Never could he make up his mind to give 
his whole-hearted approval, even after the 
event, to the decision which had saved his 
life. When we said to him: 

"You're all right. We've done the business 
for you!" he would not commit himself. 

"We shall see, we shall see." 

He got quite well, and we sent him into 
the interior. Since then, he has written to 
us, "business letters," prudent letters which 
he signs "a poor mutilated fellow." 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 75 



XVI 

Lapointe and Ropiteau always meet in the 
dressing ward. Ropiteau is brought in on a 
stretcher, and Lapointe arrives on foot, jaunt- 
ily, holding up his elbow, which is going on 
"as well as possible." 

Lying on the table, the dressings removed 
from his thigh, Ropiteau waits to be tended, 
looking at a winter fly walking slowly along 
the ceiling, like an old man bowed down with 
sorrow. 

As soon as Ropiteau's wounds are laid bare, 
Lapointe, who is versed in these matters, opens 
the conversation. 

"What do they put on it?" 

"Well, only yellow spirit." 

"That's the strongest of all. It stings, but 
it is first-rate for strengthening the flesh. I 
always get ether." 

"Ether stinks so!" 

"Yes, it stinks, but one gets used to it. 
It warms the blood. Don't you have tubes 
any longer?" 

"They took out the last on Tuesday." 



76 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"Mine have been taken away, too. Wait 
a minute, old chap, let me look at it. Does 
it itch?" 

"Yes, it feels like rats gnawing at me." 

"If it feels like rats, it's all right. Mine 
feels like rats, too. Don't you want to 
scratch?" 

"Yes, but they say I mustn't." 

"No, of course, you mustn't. . . . But you 
can always tap on the dressing a little with 
your finger. That is a relief." 

Lapointe leans over and examines Ropi- 
teau's large wound. 

"Old chap, it's getting on jolly well. Same 
here; I'll show you presently. It's red, the 
skin is beginning to grow again. But it is 
thin, very thin." 

Lapointe sits down to have his dressing 
cut away, then he makes a half turn towards 
Ropiteau. 

"You see — getting on famously." 

Ropiteau admires unreservedly. 

"Yes, you're right. It looks first-rate." 

"And you know . . . such a beastly mess 
came out of it." 

At this moment, the busy forceps cover up 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 77 

the wounds with the dressing, and the opera- 
tion comes to an end. 

"So long!" says Lapointe to his elbow, cast- 
ing a farewell glance at it. And he adds, as 
he gets to the door : 

"Now there are only the damned fingers 
that won't get on. But I don't care. I've 
made up my mind to be a postman." 

XVII 

Bouchenton was not very communicative. 
We knew nothing of his past history. As to 
his future plans, he revealed them by one day 
presenting to the head doctor for his signature 
a paper asking leave to open a Moorish cafe 
at Medea after his recovery, a request the 
head doctor felt himself unable to endorse. 

Bouchenton had undergone a long martyr- 
dom in order to preserve an arm from which 
the bone had been partially removed, but 
from which a certain amount of work might 
still be expected. He screamed like the 
others, and his cry was "Mohabdi! Mo- 
habdi!" When the forceps came near, he 
cried: "Don't put them in!" And after 



78 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

this he maintained a silence made up of 
dignity and indolence. During the day he 
was to be seen wandering about the wards, 
holding up his ghostly muffled arm with his 
sound hand. In the evening, he learned to 
play draughts, because it is a serious, silent 
game, and requires consideration. 

Now one day when Bouchenton, seated on 
a chair, was waiting for his wound to be 
dressed, the poor adjutant Figuet began to 
complain in a voice that was no more than 
the shadow of a voice, just as his body was 
no more than the shadow of a body. 

Figuet was crawling at the time up the 
slopes of a Calvary where he was soon to fall 
once more, never to rise again. 

The most stupendous courage and endurance 
foundered then in a despair for which there 
seemed henceforth to be no possible allevia- 
tion. 

Figuet, I say, began to complain, and every 
one in the ward feigned to be engrossed in 
his occupation, and to hear nothing, because 
when such a man began to groan, the rest 
felt that the end of all things had come. 

Bouchenton turned his head, looked at the 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 79 

adjutant, seized his flabby arm carefully with 
his right hand, and set out. Walking with 
little short steps he came to the table where 
the suffering man lay. 

Stretching out his neck, his great bowed 
body straining in an effort of attention, he 
looked at the wounds, the pus, the soiled 
bandages, the worn, thin face, and his own 
wooden visage laboured under the stress of 
all kinds of feelings. 

Then Bouchenton did a very simple thing; 
he relaxed his hold on his own boneless arm, 
held out his right hand to Figuet, seized his 
transparent fingers and held them tightly 
clasped. 

The adjutant ceased groaning. As long as 
the silent pressure lasted, he ceased to com- 
plain, ceased perhaps to suffer. Bouchenton 
kept his right hand there as long as it was 
necessary. 

I saw this, Bouchenton, my brother. I 
will not forget it. And I saw, too, your 
aching, useless left arm, which you had 
been obliged to abandon in order to have a 
hand to give, hanging by your side like a 
limp rag. 



80 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 



XVIII 

To be over forty years old, to be a trades- 
man of repute, well known throughout one's 
quarter, to be at the head of a prosperous 
provision-dealer's business, and to get two 
fragments of shell — in the back and the left 
buttock respectively — is really a great mis- 
fortune; yet this is what happened to [M. 
Levy, infantryman and Territorial. 

I never spoke familiarly to M. Levy, because 
of his age and his air of respectability; and 
perhaps, too, because, in his case, I felt a great 
and special need to preserve my authority. 

Monsieur Levy was not always "a good 
patient." When I first approached him, he 
implored me not to touch him "at any price." 

I disregarded these injunctions, and did 
what was necessary. Throughout the process, 
Monsieur Levy was snoring, be it said. But 
he woke up at last, uttered one or two piercing 
cries, and stigmatised me as a "brute." All 
right. 

Then I showed him the big pieces of cast- 
iron I had removed from his back and his 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 81 

buttock respectively. Monsieur Levy's eyes 
at once filled with tears; he murmured a few 
feeling words about his family, and then 
pressed my hands warmly: "Thank you, 
thank you, dear Doctor." 

Since then, Monsieur Levy has suffered a 
good deal, I must admit. There are the 
plugs! And those abominable india-rubber 
tubes we push into the wounds! Monsieur 
Levy, kneeling and prostrating himself, his 
head in his bolster, suffered every day and 
for several days without stoicism or resig- 
nation. I was called an "assassin" and 
also on several occasions, a "brute." All 
right. 

However, as I was determined that Mon- 
sieur Levy should get well, I renewed the plugs, 
and looked sharply after the famous india- 
rubber tubes. 

The time came when my hands were warmly 
pressed and my patient said: "Thank you, 
thank you, dear Doctor," every day. 

At last Monsieur Levy ceased to suffer, and 
confined himself to the peevish murmurs of 
a spoilt beauty or a child that has been 
scolded. But now no one takes him seriously. 



82 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

He has become the delight of the ward; he 
laughs so heartily when the dressing is over, 
he is naturally so gay and playful, that I am 
rather at a loss as to the proper expression 
to assume when, alluding to the past, he says, 
with a look in which good nature, pride, sim- 
plicity, and a large proportion of playful 
malice are mingled: 

"I suffered so much! so much!" 



XIX 

He was no grave, handsome Arab, looking 
as if he had stepped from the pages of the 
"Arabian Nights," but a kind of little brown 
monster with an overhanging forehead and 
ugly, scanty hair. 

He lay upon the table, screaming, because 
his abdomen was very painful and his hip was 
all tumefied. What could we say to him? 
He could understand nothing; he was strange, 
terrified, pitiable. . . . 

At my wits' ends, I took out a cigarette and 
placed it between his lips. His whole face 
changed. He took hold of the cigarette deli- 
cately between two bony fingers; he had a 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 83 

way of holding it which was a marvel of 
aristocratic elegance. 

While we finished the dressing, the poor 
fellow smoked slowly and gravely, with all 
the distinction of an Oriental prince; then, 
with a negligent gesture, he threw away 
the cigarette, of which he had only smoked 
half. 

Presently, suddenly becoming an animal, he 
spit upon my apron, and kissed my hand like 
a dog, repeating something which sounded like 
"Bouia! Bouia!" 



XX 

Gautreau looked like a beast of burden. He 
was heavy, square, solid of base and majestic 
of neck and throat. What he could carry on 
his back would have crushed an ordinary man; 
he had big bones, so hard that the fragment of 
shell which struck him on the skull only cracked 
it, and got no further into it. Gautreau arrived 
at the hospital alone, on foot; he sat down on 
a chair in the corner, saying: 

"No need to hurry; it's only a scratch." 



84 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYES 

We gave him a cup of tea with rum in it, 
and he began to hum: 

En c our ant par les ep eigne s 

Je m y etios fait un ecourchon, 

Et en courant par les epeignes 

Et en courant apres no? couchon. 

"Ah!" said Monsieur Boissin, "you are a 
man! Come here, let me see." 

Gautreau went into the operating ward 
saying : 

"It feels queer to be walking on dry ground 
when you've just come off the slime. You 
see: it's only a scratch. But one never 
knows: there may be some bits left in it." 

Dr. Boussin probed the wound, and felt 
the cracked bone. He was an old surgeon 
who had his own ideas about courage and 
pain. He made up his mind. 

"I am in a hurry; you are a man. There 
is just a little something to be done to you. 
Kneel down there and don't stir." 

A few minutes later, Gautreau was on his 
knees, holding on to the leg of the table. His 
head was covered with blood-stained ban- 
dages, and Dr. Boussin, chisel in hand, was 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 85 

tapping on his skull with the help of a little 
mallet, like a sculptor. Gautreau exclaimed: 

''Monsieur Bassin, Monsieur Bassin, you're 
hurting me." 

"Not Bassin, but Boussin," replied the old 
man calmly. 

"Well, Boussin, if you like." 

There was a silence, and then Gautreau 
suddenly added: 

"Monsieur Bassin, you are killing me with 
these antics." 

"No fear!" 

"Monsieur Bassin, I tell you you're killing 



me." 



"Just a second more." 

"Monsieur Bassin, you're driving nails into 
my head, it's a shame." 

"I've almost finished." 

"Monsieur Bassin, I can't stand any more." 

"It's all over now," said the surgeon, laying 
down his instruments. 

Gautreau's head was swathed with cotton 
wool and he left the ward. 

"The old chap means well," he said, laugh- 
ing, "but fancy knocking like that . . . 
with a hammer! It's not that it hurts so 



86 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

much; the pain was no great matter. But it 
kills one, that sort of thing, and I'm not go- 
ing to stand that." 

XXI 

There is only one man in the world who can 
hold Hourticq's leg, and that is Monet. 

Hourticq, who is a Southerner, cries de- 
spairingly: "Oh, cette jammbe, cette 
jammbe! ,, And his anxious eyes look eagerly 
round for some one : not his doctor, but his 
orderly, Monet. Whatever happens, the doc- 
tor will always do those things which doctors 
do. Monet is the only person who can take 
the heel and then the foot in both hands, 
raise the leg gently, and hold it in the air as 
long as it is necessary. 

There are people, it seems, who think this 
notion ridiculous. They are all jealous per- 
sons who envy Monet's position and would 
like to show that they too know how to hold 
Hourticq's leg properly. But it is not my 
business to show favour to the ambitious. As 
soon as Hourticq is brought in, I call Monet. 
If Monet is engaged, well, I wait. He comes, 
lays hold of the leg, and Hourticq ceases to 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 87 

lament. It is sometimes a long business, 
very long; big drops of sweat come out on 
Monet's forehead. But I know that he 
would not give up his place for anything in 
the world. 

When Mazy arrived at the hospital, Hour- 
ticq, who is no egoist, said to him at once in 
a low tone : 

"Yours is a leg too, isn't it? You must 
try to get Monet to hold it for you." 

XXII 

If Bouchard were not so bored, he would 
not be very wretched, for he is very courage- 
ous, and he has a good temper. But he is 
terribly bored, in his gentle, uncomplaining 
fashion. He is too ill to talk or play games. 
He cannot sleep; he can only contemplate the 
wall, and his own thoughts which creep slowly 
along it, like caterpillars. 

In the morning, I bring a catheter with me, 
and when Bouchard's wounds are dressed, I 
apply it, for unfortunately, he can no longer 
perform certain functions independently. 

Bouchard has crossed his hands behind the 



88 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

nape of his neck, and watches the process with 

a certain interest. I ask: 

"Did I hurt you? Is it very unpleasant?" 
Bouchard gives a melancholy smile and 

shakes his head: 

"Oh, no, not at all! In fact it rather 

amuses me. It makes a few minutes pass. 

The day is so long. . . ." 

XXIII 

Thoughts of Prosper Ruffin 

. . . God! How awful it is in this car- 
riage! Who is it who is groaning like that? 
It's maddening! And then, all this would 
never have happened if they had only brought 
the coffee at the right time. Well now, a 
wretched 77 . . . oh, no! Who is it who 
is groaning like that? God, another jolt! 
No, no, man, we are not salad. Take care 
there. My kidneys are all smashed. 

Ah! now something is dripping on my 
nose. Hi! You up there, what's happening? 
He doesn't answer. I suppose it's blood, all 
this mess. 

.Now again, some one is beginning to squeal 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 89 

like a pig. By the way, can it be me ? What ! 
it was I who was groaning! Upon my word, 
it's a little too strong, that! It was I myself 
who was making all the row, and I did not 
know it. It's odd to hear oneself screaming. 

Ah! now it's stopping, their beastly motor. 

Look, there's the sun! What's that tree 
over there? I know, it's a Japanese pine. 
Well, you see, I'm a gardener, old chap. 
Oh, oh, oh! My back! What will Felicie 
say to me? 

Look, there's Felicie coming down to the 
washing trough. She pretends not to see 
me. ... I will steal behind the elder hedge. 
Felicie! Felicie! I have a piece of a 77 
in my kidneys. I like her best in her blue 
bodice. 

What are you putting over my nose, you 
people? It stinks horribly. I am choking, I 
tell you. Felicie, Felicie. Put on your blue 
bodice with the white spots, my little Fell . . . 
Oh, but . . . oh, but ... ! 

Oh, the Whitsuntide bells already! God — 
the bells already ... the Whitsun bells . . . 
the bells. . . . 



90 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 



XXIV 

I remember him very well, although he 
was not long with us. Indeed I think that I 
shall never forget him, and yet he stayed such 
a short time. . . . 

When he arrived, we told him that an 
operation was necessary, and he made a move- 
ment with his head, as if to say that it was 
our business, not his. 

We operated, and as soon as he recovered 
consciousness, he went off again into a dream 
which was like a glorious delirium, silent and 
haughty. 

His breathing was so impeded by blood 
that it sounded like groaning; but his eyes 
were full of a strange serenity. That look 
was never with us. 

I had to uncover and dress his wounds 
several times; and those wounds must have 
suffered. But to the last, he himself seemed 
aloof from everything, even his own suffer- 
ings. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 91 

XXV 

Come in here. You can see him once 



more." 



I open the door, and push the big fair ar- 
tilleryman into the room where his brother 
has just died. 

I turn back the sheet and uncover the face 
of the corpse. The flesh is still warm. 

The big fellow looks like a peasant. He 
holds his helmet in both hands, and stares at 
his brother's face with eyes full of horror and 
amazement. Then suddenly, he begins to cry 
out: 

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!" 

This cry of the rough man is unexpected, 
and grandiose as the voice of ancient trage- 
dians chanting the threnody of a hero. 

Then he drops his helmet, throws himself 
on his knees beside the death-bed, takes the 
dead face between his hands and kisses it 
gently and slowly with a little sound of the 
lips, as one kisses a baby's hand. 

I take him by the arm and lead him away. 
His sturdy body is shaken by sobs which are 



92 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

like the neighing of a horse; he is blinded by 
his tears, and knocks against all the furni- 
ture. He can do nothing but lament in a 
broken voice: 

"Poor Andre! Poor Andre!" 



XXVI 

La Gloriette is amongst the pine-trees. I 
lift up a corner of the canvas and he is there. 
In spite of the livid patches on the skin, in 
spite of the rigidity of the features, and the 
absence for all time of the glance, it is un- 
doubtedly the familiar face. 

What a long time he suffered to win the 
right to be at last this thing which suffers no 
more! 

I draw back the winding-sheet. The body 
is as yet but little touched by corruption. 
The dressings are in place, as before. And 
as before, I think, as I draw back the sheet, of 
the look he will turn on me at the moment of 
suffering. 

But there is no longer any look, no longer 
any suffering, no longer even any movements. 
Only, only unimaginable eternity. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 93 

For whom is the damp autumn breeze which 
flutters the canvas hung before the door? 
For whom the billowy murmur of the pine- 
trees and the rays of light crossed by a flight 
of insects? For whom this growling of can- 
non mingling now with the landscape like one 
of the sounds of nature? For me only, for 
me, alone here with the dead. 

The corpse is still so near to the living man 
that I cannot make up my mind that I am 
alone, that I cannot make up my mind to 
think as when I am alone. 

For indeed we spent too many days hoping 
together, enduring together, and if you will 
allow me to say so, my comrade, suffering to- 
gether. We spent too many days wishing 
for the end of the fever, examining the wound, 
searching after the deeply rooted cause of the 
disaster — both tremulous, you from the effort 
to bear your pain, I sometimes from having 
inflicted it. 

We spent so many days, do you remember, 
oh, body without a soul ... so many days 
fondly expecting the medal you had deserved. 
But it seems that one must have given an eye 
or a limb to be put on the list, and you, all of 



94 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

a sudden, you gave your life. The medal had 
not come, for it does not travel so quickly as 
death. 

So many days! And now we are together 
again, for the last time. 

Well! I came for a certain purpose. I 
came to learn certain things at last that your 
body can tell me now. 

I open the case. As before, I cut the 
dressings with the shining scissors. And I 
was just about to say to you, as before: "If 
I hurt you, call out." 

XXVII 

At the edge of the beetroot field, a few 
paces from the road, in the white sand of 
Champagne, there is a burial-ground. 

Branches of young beech encircle it, mak- 
ing a rustic barrier that shuts out nothing, but 
allows the eyes and the winds to wander at 
will. There is a porch like those of Norman 
gardens. Near the entrance four pine-trees 
were planted, and these have died standing 1 
at their posts, like soldiers. 

It is a burial-ground of men. 



MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS 95 

In the villages, round the churches, or on 
the fair hill-sides, among vines and flowers, 
there are ancient graveyards which the cen- 
turies filled slowly, and where woman sleeps 
beside man, and the child beside the grand- 
father. 

But this burial-ground owes nothing to old 
age or sickness. It is the burial-ground of 
young, strong men. 

We may read their names on the hundreds 
of little crosses which repeat daily in speech- 
less unison: "There must be something more 
precious than life, more necessary than life 
. . . since we are here." 



THE DEATH OF MERCIER 

MERCIER is dead, and I saw his corpse 
weep. ... I did not think such a 
thing possible. 

The orderly had just washed his face and 
combed his grey hair. 

I said: "You are not forty yet, , my poor 
Mercier, and your hair is almost white al- 
ready." 

"It is because my life has been a very hard 
one, and I have had so many sorrows. I 
have worked so hard ... so hard! And I 
have had so little luck." 

There are pitiful little wrinkles all over his 
face; a thousand disappointments have left 
indelible traces there. And yet his eyes are 
always smiling; from out his faded features 
they shine, bright with an artless candour 
and radiant with hope. 

"You will cure me, and perhaps I shall be 
luckier in the future." 

I say "yes," and I think, "Alas! No, 



no. 



96 



THE DEATH OF MERCIER 97 

But suddenly he calls me. Great dark hol- 
lows appear under the smiling eyes. A livid 
sweat bathes his forehead. 

"Come, come!" he says. "Something ter- 
rible is taking hold of me. Surely I am go- 
ing to die." 

We busy ourselves with the poor paralysed 
body. The face alone labours to translate its 
sufferings. The hands make the very slight- 
est movement on the sheet. The bullets of 
the machine-gun have cut off all the rest from 
the sources of life. 

We do what we can, but I feel his heart 
beating more feebly; his lips make immense 
efforts to beg for one drop, one drop only 
from the vast cup of air. 

Gradually he escapes from this hell. I di- 
vine that his hand makes a movement as if 
to detain mine. 

"Stay by me," he says; "I am afraid." 

I stay by him. The sweat no longer stands 
on his brow. The horrible distress passes 
off. The air flows again into the miserable 
breast. The gentle eyes have not ceased to 
smile. 

"You will save me after all," he says; 



98 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"I have had too miserable a life to die yet, 
Monsieur." 

I press his hand to give him confidence, 
and I feel that his hard hand is happy in 
mine. My fingers have groped in his flesh, 
his blood has flowed over them, and this 
creates strong ties between two men. 

Calm seems completely restored. I talk to 
him of his beautiful native place. He was a 
baker in a village of Le Cantal. I passed 
through it once as a traveller in peace time. 
We recall the scent of the juniper-bushes on 
the green slopes in summer, and the mineral 
fountains with wonderful flavours that gush 
forth among the mountains. 

"Oh!" he exclaims, "I shall always see 
you!" 

"You will see me, Mercier?" 

He is a very simple fellow; he tries to ex- 
plain, and merely adds: 

"In my eyes. ... I shall always see you 
in my eyes." 

What else does he see? What other thing 
is suddenly reflected in his eyes? 

"I think . . . oh, it is beginning again!" 

It is true; the spasm is beginning again. 



THE DEATH OF MERCIER 99 

It is terrible. In spite of our efforts, it over- 
comes the victim, and this time we are help- 
less. 

"I feel that I am going to die," he says. 

The smiling eyes are still fixed imploringly 
upon me. 

"But you will save me, you will save 
me!" 

Death has already laid a disfiguring hand 
on Mercier. 

"Stay by me." 

Yes, I will stay by you, and hold your hand. 
Is there nothing more I can do for you? 

His nostrils quiver. It is hard to have 
been wretched for forty years, and to have 
to give up the humble hope of smelling the 
pungent scent of the juniper-bushes once 
more. . . . 

His lips contract, and then relax gradually, 
so sadly. It is hard to have suffered for forty 
years, and to be unable to quench one's last 
thirst with the wonderful waters of our moun- 
tain springs. . . . 

Now the dark sweat gathers again on the 
hollow brow. Oh, it is hard to die after forty 
years of toil, without ever having had leisure 



100 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

to wipe the sweat from a brow that has al- 
ways been bent over one's work. 

The sacrifice is immense, and we cannot 
choose our hour; we must make it as soon as 
we hear the voice that demands it. 

The man must lay down his tools and say: 
"Here I am." 

Oh, how hard it is to leave this life of un- 
ceasing toil and sorrow ! 

The eyes still smile feebly. They smile to 
the last moment. 

He speaks no more. He breathes no more. 
The heart throbs wildly, then stops dead like 
a foundered horse. 

Mercier is dead. The pupils of his eyes are 
solemnly distended upon a glassy abyss. All 
is over. I have not saved him. . . . 

Then from those dead eyes great tears ooze 
slowly and flow upon his cheeks. I see his 
features contract as if to weep throughout 
eternity. 

I keep the dead hand still clasped in mine 
for several long minutes. 



VERDUN 

February-April 191 6 

WE were going northward by forced 
marches, through a France that 
was like a mournful garden planted 
with crosses. We were no longer in doubt as 
to our appointed destination; every day since 

we had disembarked at B our orders 

had enjoined us to hasten our advance to 
the fighting units of the Army Corps. This 
Army Corps was contracting, and drawing it- 
self together hurriedly, its head already in the 
thick of the fray, its tail still winding along 
the roads, across the battle-field of the Marne. 
February was closing in, damp and icy, with 
squalls of sleet, under a sullen, hideous sky, 
lowering furiously down to the level of the 
ground. Everywhere there were graves, uni- 
formly decent, or rather according to pattern, 
showing a shield of tri-colour or black and 
white, and figures. Suddenly, we came upon 
immense flats, whence the crosses stretched 
out their arms between the poplars like men 
101 



102 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
struggling to save themselves from being en- 
gulfed. Many ancient villages, humble, ir- 
remediable ruins. And yet here and there, 
perched upon these, frail cabins of planks and 
tiles, sending forth thin threads of smoke, and 
emitting a timid light, in an attempt to be- 
gin life again as before, on the same spot as 
before. Now and again we chanced upon a 
hamlet which the hurricane had passed by al- 
most completely, full to overflowing with the 
afflux of neighbouring populations. 

Beyond P , our advance, though it con- 
tinued to be rapid, became very difficult, ow- 
ing to the confluence of convoys and troops. 
The main roads, reserved for the military 
masses which were under the necessity of 
moving rapidly, arriving early, and striking 
suddenly, were barred to us. From every 
point of the horizon disciplined multitudes 
converged, with their arsenal of formidable 
implements, rolling along in an atmosphere 
of benzine and hot oil. Through this ordered 
mass, our convoys threaded their way tena- 
ciously and advanced. We could see on the 
hill sides, crawling like a clan of migrating 
ants, stretcher-bearers and their dogs drawing 



VERDUN 103 

handcarts for the wounded, then the columns 
of orderlies, muddy and exhausted, then the 
ambulances, which every week of war loads a 
little more heavily, dragged along by horses 
in a steam of sweat. 

From time to time, the whole train halted 
at some cross-road, and the ambulances al- 
lowed more urgent things to pass in front of 
them — things designed to kill, sturdy grey 
mortars borne along post haste in a metallic 
rumble. 

A halt, a draught of wine mingled with rain, 
a few minutes to choke over a mouthful of 
stale bread, and we were off again, longing 
for the next halt, for a dry shelter, for an 
hour of real sleep. 

Soon after leaving C we began to meet 

fugitives. This complicated matters very 
much, and the spectacle began to show an 
odious likeness to the scenes of the beginning 
of the war, the scenes of the great retreat. 

Keeping along the roadsides, the by-roads, 
the field-paths, they were fleeing from the 
Verdun district, whence they had been evacu- 
ated by order. They were urging on miser- 
able old horses, drawing frail carts, their 



104 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

wheels sunk in the ruts up to the nave, loaded 
with mattresses and eiderdowns, with appli- 
ances for eating and sleeping, and sometimes 
too, with cages in which birds were twitter- 
ing. On they went, from village to village, 
seeking an undiscoverable lodging, but not 
complaining, saying merely: 

"You are going to Verdun? We have 

just come from X -. We were ordered 

to leave. It is very difficult to find a place to 
settle down in." 

Women passed. Two of them were drag- 
ging a little baby-carriage in which an infant 
lay asleep. One of them was quite young, the 
other old. They held up their skirts out of the 
mud. They were wearing little town shoes, 
and every minute they sank into the slime like 
ourselves, sometimes above their ankles. 

All day long we encountered similar pro- 
cessions. I do not remember seeing one of 
these women weep; but they seemed terri- 
fied, and mortally tired. 

Meanwhile, the sound of the guns became 
fuller and more regular. All the roads we 
caught sight of in the country seemed to be 
bearing their load of men and of machines. 



VERDUN 105 

Here and there a horse which had succumbed 
at its task lay rotting at the foot of a hillock. 
A subdued roar rose to the ear, made up of 
trampling hoofs, of grinding wheels, of the 
buzz of motors, and of a multitude talking 
and eating on the march. 

Suddenly we debouched at the edge of a 
wood upon a height whence we could see the 
whole battle-field. It was a vast expanse of 
plains and slopes, studded with the grey woods 
of winter. Long trails of smoke from burning 
buildings settled upon the landscape. And 
other trails, minute and multi-coloured, rose 
from the ground wherever projectiles were 
raining. Nothing more: wisps of smoke, 
brief flashes visible even in broad daylight, 
and a string of captive balloons, motionless 
and observant witnesses of all. 

But we were already descending the incline 
and the various planes of the landscape melted 
one after the other. As we were passing over 
a bridge, I saw in a group of soldiers a friend 
I had not met since the beginning of the war. 
We could not stop, so he walked along with 
me for a while, and we spent these few minutes 
recalling the things of the past. Then as he 



106 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

left me we embraced, though we had never 
done so in times of peace. 

Night was falling. Knowing that we were 
now at our last long lap, we encouraged the 

worn-out men. At R I lost touch with 

my formation. I halted on the roadside, call- 
ing aloud into the darkness. An artillery- 
train passed, covering me with mud to my 
eyes. Finally, I picked up my friends, and 
we marched on through villages illumined by 
the camp fires which were flickering under a 
driving rain, through a murky country which 
the flash of cannon suddenly showed to be 
covered with a multitude of men, of horses, 
and of martial objects. 

It was February 27. Between ten and 
eleven at night we arrived at a hospital in- 
stalled in some wooden sheds, and feverishly 

busy. We were at B , a miserable village 

on which next day the Germans launched some 
thirty monster-shells, yet failed to kill so much 
as a mouse. 

The night was spent on straw, to the sten- 
torian snores of fifty men overcome by fatigue. 
Then reveille, and again, liquid mud over the 
ankles. As the main road was forbidden to 



VERDUN 107 

our ambulances there was an excited discus- 
sion as a result of which we separated: the 
vehicles to go in search of a by-way, and we, 
the pedestrians, to skirt the roads on which 
long lines of motor-lorries, coming and going, 
passed each other in haste like the carriages of 
an immense train. 

We had known since midnight where we 
were to take up our quarters; the suburb of 

G was only an hour's march further on. 

In the fields, right and left, were bivouacs of 
colonial troops with muddy helmets; they 
had come back from the firing line, and seemed 
strangely quiet. In front of us lay the town, 
half hidden, full of crackling sounds and 
echoes. Beyond, the hills of the Meuse, on 
which we could distinguish the houses of the 
villages, and the continuous rain of machine- 
gun bullets. We skirted a meadow strewn 
with forsaken furniture, beds, chests, a whole 
fortune which looked like the litter of a hos- 
pital. At last we arrived at the first houses, 
and we were shown the place where we were 

expected. 

* * * 

There were two brick buildings of several 



108 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

storeys, connected by a glazed corridor; the 
rest of the enclosure was occupied by wooden 
sheds. Behind lay orchards and gardens, the 
first houses of the suburb. In front, the wall 
of a park, a meadow, a railway track, and La 
Route, the wonderful and terrible road that 
enters the town at this very point. 

Groups of lightly wounded men were hob- 
bling towards the hospital; the incessant rush 
of motors kept up the feverish circulation of 
a demolished ant-hill. 

As we approached the buildings, a doctor 
came out to meet us. 

"Come, come. There's work enough for a 
month." 

It was true. The effluvium and the moans 
of several hundreds of wounded men greeted 

us. Ambulance No , which we had come 

to relieve, had been hard at it since the night 
before, without having made much visible 
progress. Doctors and orderlies, their faces 
haggard from a night of frantic toil, came 
and went, choosing among the heaps of 
wounded, and tended two while twenty more 
poured in. 

While waiting for our material, we went 



VERDUN 109 

over the buildings. But a few days before, 
contagious diseases had been treated here. A 
hasty disinfection had left the wards reeking 
with formaline which rasped the throat with- 
out disguising the sickly stench of the crowded 
sufferers. They were huddled round the 
stoves in the rooms, lying upon the beds of 
the dormitories, or crouching on the flags of 
the passages. 

In each ward of the lower storey there 
were thirty or forty men of every branch of 
the service, moaning and going out from time 
to time to crawl to the latrines, or, mug in 
hand, to fetch something to drink. 

As we explored further, the scene became 
more terrible; in the back rooms and in the 
upper building a number of severely wounded 
men had been placed, who began to howl as 
soon as we entered. Many of them had been 
there for several days. The brutality of cir- 
cumstances, the relief of units, the enormous 
sum of work, all combined to create one of 
those situations which dislocate and over- 
whelm the most willing service. 

We opened a door, and the men who were 
lying within began to scream at the top of their 



110 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

voices. Some, lying on their stretchers on 
the floor, seized us by the legs as we passed, 
imploring us to attend to them. A few be- 
wildered orderlies hurried hither and thither, 
powerless to meet the needs of this mass of 
suffering. Every moment I felt my coat 
seized, and heard a voice saying: 

"I have been here four days. Dress my 
wounds, for God's sake." 

And when I answered that I would come 
back again immediately, the poor fellow be- 
gan to cry. 

"They all say they will come back, but 
they never do." 

Occasionally a man in delirium talked to us 
incoherently as we moved along. Sometimes 
we went round a quiet bed to see the face of 
the sufferer, and found only a corpse. 

Each ward we inspected revealed the same 
distress, exhaled the same odour of antisep- 
tics and excrements, for the orderlies could 
not always get to the patient in time, and 
many of the men relieved themselves appar- 
ently unconcerned. 

I remember a little deserted room in dis- 
order, on the table a bowl of coffee with bread 



VERDUN 111 

floating in it; a woman's slippers on the floor, 
and in a corner, toilet articles and some 
strands of fair hair. ... I remember a cor- 
ner where a wounded man suffering from men- 
ingitis, called out unceasingly: 27, 28, 
29 . . . 27, 28, 29 ... a prey to a strange 
obsession of numbers. I see a kitchen where 
a soldier was plucking a white fowl ... I 
see an Algerian non-commissioned officer pac- 
ing the corridor. . . . 

Towards noon, the head doctor arrived 
followed by my comrades, and our vehicles. 
With him I made the round of the buildings 
again while they were unpacking our stores. 
I had got hold of a syringe, while waiting 
for a knife, and I set to work distributing 
morphia. The task before us seemed im- 
mense, and every minute it increased. We 
began to divide it hastily, to assign to each 
his part. The cries of the sufferers muffled 
the sound of a formidable cannonade. An 
assistant at my side, whom I knew to be en- 
ergetic and resolute, muttered between his 
teeth: "No! no! Anything rather than 
war!" 



112 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

But we had first to introduce some order 
into our Inferno. 

* * * 

In a few hours this order appeared and 
reigned. We were exhausted by days of 
marching and nights of broken sleep, but men 
put off their packs and set to work with a 
silent courage that seemed to exalt even the 
least generous natures. Our first spell lasted 
for thirty-six hours, during which each one 
gave to the full measure of his powers, with- 
out a thought of self. 

Four operation-wards had been arranged. 
The wounded were brought in unceasingly, 
and a grave and prudent mind pronounced 
upon the state of each, upon his fate, his fu- 
ture. . . . Confronted by the overwhelming 
flood of work to be done, the surgeon, before 
seizing the knife, had to meditate deeply, and 
make a decision as to the sacrifice which 
would ensure life, or give some hope of life. 
In a moment of effective thought, he had to 
perceive and weigh a man's whole existence, 
then act, with method and audacity. 

As soon as one wounded man left the ward, 
another was brought in; while the prepara- 



VERDUN 113 

tions for the operation were being made, we 
went to choose among and classify the pa- 
tients beforehand, for many needed nothing 
more; they had passed beyond human aid, 
and awaited, numb and unconscious, the 
crowning mercy of death. 

The word "untransportable" once pro- 
nounced, directed all our work. The wounded 
capable of waiting a few hours longer for 
attention, and of going elsewhere for it were 
removed. But when the buzz of the motors 
was heard, every one wanted to go, and men 
begging to be taken away entered upon their 
death agony as they assured us they felt quite 
strong enough to travel. . . . 

Some told us their histories; the majority 
were silent. They wanted to go elsewhere 
. . . and above all, to sleep, to drink. Nat- 
ural wants dominated, and made them forget 
the anguish of their wounds. . . . 

I remember one poor fellow who was asked 
if he wanted anything. . . . He had a terrible 
wound in the chest, and was waiting to be 
examined. He replied timidly that he wanted 
the urinal, and when the orderly hurried to 
him bringing it, he was dead. 



114 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

The pressure of urgent duty had made us 
quite unmindful of the battle close by, and of 
the deafening cannonade. However, towards 
evening, the buildings trembled under the 
fury of the detonations. A little armoured 
train had taken up its position near us. The 
muzzle of a naval gun protruded from it, 
and from moment to moment thrust out a 
broad tongue of flame with a catastrophic 
roar. 

The work was accelerated at the very height 
of the uproar. Rivers of water had run along 
the corridors, washing down the mud, the 
blood and the refuse of the operation-wards. 
The men who had been operated on were 
carried to beds on which clean sheets had been 
spread. The open windows let in the pure, 
keen air, and night fell on the hillsides of the 
Meuse, where the tumult raged and lightnings 
flashed. 

Sometimes a wounded man brought us the 
latest news of the battle. Between his groans, 
he described the incredible bombardment, the 
obstinate resistance, the counter-attacks at the 
height of the hurly-burly. 

All these simple fellows ended their story 



VERDUN 115 

with the same words, surprising words at such 
a moment of suffering: 

"They can't get through now. . . . 

Then they began to moan again. 

During the terrible weeks of the battle, it 
was from the lips of these tortured men that 
we heard the most amazing words of hope and 
confidence, uttered between two cries of an- 
guish. 

The first night passed under this stress and 
pressure. The morning found us face to face 
with labours still vast, but classified, divided, 
and half determined. 

A superior officer came to visit us. He 
seemed anxious. 

"They have spotted you," he said. "I 
hope you mayn't have to work upon each 
other. You will certainly be bombarded at 
noon." 

We had forgotten this prophecy by the time 
it was fulfilled. 

About noon, the air was rent by a screech- 
ing whistle, and some dozen shells fell within 
the hospital enclosure, piercing one of the 
buildings, but sparing the men. This was the 
beginning of an irregular but almost continu- 



116 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
ous bombardment, which was not specially di- 
rected against us, no doubt, but which threat- 
ened us incessantly. 

No cellars. Nothing but thin walls. The 
work went on. 

On the third day a lull enabled us to com- 
plete our organisation. The enemy was bom- 
barding the town and the lines persistently. 
Our artillery replied, shell for shell, in furious 
salvos; a sort of thunderous wall rose around 
us which seemed to us like a rampart. . . . 
The afflux of wounded had diminished. We 
had just received men who had been fighting 
in the open country, as in the first days of the 
war, but under a hail of projectiles hitherto 
reserved for the destruction of fortresses. 
Our. comrade D arrived from the battle- 
field on foot, livid, supporting his shattered 
elbow. He stammered out a tragic story: his 
regiment had held its ground under a surging 
tide of fire; thousands of huge shells had 
fallen in a narrow ravine, and he had seen 
limbs hanging in the thicket, a savage dis- 
persal of human bodies. The men had held 
their ground, and then had fought. . . . 

A quarter of an hour after his arrival 



VERDUN 117 

D , refreshed and strengthened, was con- 
templating the big wound in his arm on the 
operating table, and talking calmly of his 
ruined future. . . . 

Towards the evening of this day, we were 
able to go out of the building, and breathe the 
unpolluted air for a few minutes. 

The noise reigned supreme, as silence reigns 
elsewhere. We were impregnated, almost in- 
toxicated with it. . . . 

A dozen of those captive balloons which 
the soldiers call "sausages" formed an aerial 
semi-circle and kept watch. 

On the other side of the hills the German 
balloons also watched in the purple mist to 
the East. 

Night came, and the balloons remained 
faithfully at their posts. We were in the 
centre of a circus of fire, woven by all the 
lightnings of the cannonade. To the south- 
west, however, a black breach opened, and 
one divined a free passage there towards the 
interior of the country and towards silence. 
A few hundred feet from us, a cross-road 
continually shelled by the enemy echoed to 
the shock of projectiles battering the ground 



118 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

like hammers on an anvil. We often found at 
our feet fragments of steel still hot, which in 
the gloom seemed slightly phosphorescent. 



From this day forth, a skilful combination 
of our hours and our means enabled us to take 
short spells of rest in turn. However, for a 
hundred reasons sleep was impossible to me, 
and for several weeks I forgot what it was to 
slumber. 

I used to retire, then, from time to time to 

the room set apart for my friend V and 

myself, and lie down on a bed, overcome by a 
fatigue that verged on stupefaction; but the 
perpetual clatter of sabots and shoes in the 
passage kept the mind alert and the eyes open. 
The chorus of the wounded rose in gusts; 
there were always in the adjoining wards 
some dozen men wounded in the head, and 
suffering from meningitis, which provoked a 
kind of monotonous howling; there were men 
wounded in the abdomen, and crying out 
for the drink that was denied them; there 
were the men wounded in the chest, and racked 
by a low cough choked with blood . . . and 



VERDUN 119 

all the rest who lay moaning, hoping for an 
impossible repose. . . . 

Then I would get up and go back to work, 
haunted by the terrible fear that excess of 
fatigue might have made my eye less keen, 
my hand less steady than imperious duty re- 
quired. 

At night more especially, the bombardment 
was renewed, in hurricane gusts. 

The air, rent by projectiles, mewed like a 
furious cat; the detonations came closer, 
then retired methodically, like the footsteps 
of a giant on guard around us, above us, upon 
us. 

Every morning the orderlies took advantage 
of a moment of respite to run and inspect the 
new craters, and unearth the fuses of shells. 
... I thought of the delightful phrase of as- 
sistant-surgeon M whom we had at- 
tended for a wound on the head, and who 
said to me as I was taking him back to bed, 
and we heard the explosions close by: 

"Oh, the marmites (big shells) always fall 
short of one." 

But to a great many of the wounded, the 
perpetual uproar was intolerable. They im- 



120 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

plored us with tears to send them somewhere 
else; those we kept were, as a fact, unable to 
bear removal; we had to soothe them and 
keep them, in spite of everything. Some, 
overcome by fatigue, slept all day; others 
showed extraordinary indifference, perhaps 
due to a touch of delirium, like the man with 
a wound in the abdomen which I was dress- 
ing one morning, and who when he saw me 
turn my head at the sound of an explosion 
which ploughed up a neighbouring field, as- 
sured me quietly that "those things weren't 
dangerous. " 

One night a policeman ran in with his face 
covered with blood. 

He was waving a lantern which he used to 
regulate the wheeled traffic, and he main- 
tained that the enemy had spotted his lamp 
and had peppered him with bullets. As a 
fact, he had only some slight scratches. He 
went off, washed and bandaged, but only to 
come back to us the next day dead. A large 
fragment of iron had penetrated his 
eye. 

There was an entrance ward, where we 
sorted the cases. Ten times a day we thought 



VERDUN 121 

we had emptied this reservoir of misery; but 
we always found it full again, paved with 
muddy stretchers on which men lay, panting 
and waiting. 

Opposite to this ante-room was a clearing 
ward; it seemed less dismal than the other, 
though it was just as bare, and not any 
lighter; but the wounded there were clean; 
they had been operated on, they wore white 
bandages, they had been comforted with hot 
drinks and with all sorts of hopes, for they 
had already escaped the first summons of 
Death. 

Between these two rooms, a clerk lived 
in the draught, the victim of an accumula- 
tion of indispensable and stupefying docu- 
ments. 

In the beginning, the same man sat for 
three days and three nights chained to this 
ungrateful task until at last we saw him, his 
face convulsed, almost mad after unremit- 
tingly labelling all this suffering with names 
and figures. 



The first days of March were chilly, with 



122 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
alternations of snow and sunshine. When the 
air was pure, we heard it vibrate with the life 
of aeroplanes and echo to their contests. The 
dry throb of machine-guns, the incessant 
scream of shrapnel formed a kind of crack- 
ling dome over our heads. The German 
aeroplanes overwhelmed the environs with 
bombs which gave a prolonged whistle before 
tearing up the soil or gutting a house. One 
fell a few paces from the ward where I was 
operating on a man who had been wounded 
in the head. I remember the brief glance I 
cast outwards and the screams and head- 
long flight of the men standing under the 
windows. 

One morning I saw an airship which was 
cruising over the hills of the Meuse suddenly 
begin to trail after it, comet-wise, a thick 
tail of black smoke, and then rush to the 
earth, irradiated by a burst of flame, bril- 
liant even in the daylight. And I thought 
of the two men who were experiencing this 
fall. 

The military situation improved daily, but 
the battle was no less strenuous. The guns 
used by the enemy for the destruction of men 



VERDUN 123 

produced horrible wounds, certainly more 
severe on the whole than those we had tended 
during the first twenty months of a war that 
has been pitiless from its inception. All doc- 
tors must have noted the hideous success 
achieved in a very short time, in perfecting 
means of laceration. And we marvelled bit- 
terly that man could adventure his frail or- 
ganism through the deflagrations of a chem- 
istry hardly disciplined as yet, which attains 
and surpasses the brutality of the blind 
forces of Nature. We marvelled more es- 
pecially that flesh so delicate, the product and 
the producer of harmony, could endure such 
shocks and such dilapidations without instant 
disintegration. 

Many men came to us with one or several 
limbs torn off completely, yet they came still 
living. . . . Some had thirty or forty wounds, 
and even more. We examined each body 
systematically, passing from one sad discovery 
to another. They reminded us of those 
derelict vessels which let in the water every- 
where. And just because these wrecks 
seemed irredeemably condemned to disaster, 
we clung to them in the obstinate hope of 



124 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

bringing them into port and perhaps floating 
them again. 

When the pressure was greatest, it was im- 
possible to undress the men and get them 
washed properly before bringing them into 
the operating-ward. The problem was in 
these cases to isolate the work of the knife as 
far as possible from the surrounding mud, 
dirt and vermin: I have seen soldiers so cov- 
ered with lice that the different parts of the 
dressings were invaded by them, and even the 
wounds. The poor creatures apologised, as if 
they were in some way to blame. . . . 

At such moments patients succeeded each 
other so rapidly that we knew nothing of 
them beyond their wounds: the man was car- 
ried away, still plunged in sleep ; we had made 
all the necessary decisions for him without 
having heard his voice or considered his 
face. 

We avoided overcrowding by at once evac- 
uating all those on whom we had operated 
as soon as they were no longer in danger of 
complications. We loaded them up on the 
ambulances which followed one upon the 
other before the door. Some of the patients 



VERDUN 125 

came back a few minutes later, riddled with 
fragments of shell; the driver had not suc- 
ceeded in dodging the shells, and he was often 
wounded himself. In like manner the 
stretcher-bearers as they passed along the 
road were often hit themselves, and were 
brought in on their own hand-carts. 

One evening there was a "gas warning." 
Some gusts of wind arrived, bearing along an 
acrid odour. All the wounded were given 
masks and spectacles as a precaution. We 
hung them even on the heads of the beds 
where dying men lay . . . and then we 
waited. Happily, the wave spent itself before 
it reached us. 

A wounded man was brought in that eve- 
ning with several injuries caused by a gas- 
shell. His eyes had quite disappeared under 
his swollen lids. His clothing was so im- 
pregnated with the poison that we all began 
to cough and weep, and a penetrating odour 
of garlic and citric acid hung about the ward 
for some time. 

Many things we had perforce to leave to 
chance, and I thought, during this alarm, of 
men just operated on, and plunged in the 



126 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

stupor of the chloroform, whom we should 
have to allow to wake, and then mask them 
immediately, or . . . 



Ah, well! ... in the midst of all this un- 
imaginable tragedy, laughter was not quite 
quenched. This phenomenon is perhaps one 
of the characteristics, one of the greatnesses 
of our race — and in a more general way, no 
doubt, it is an imperative need of humanity 
at large. 

Certain of the wounded took a pride in 
cracking jokes, and they did so in words to 
which circumstances lent a poignant pictur- 
esqueness. These jests drew a laugh from us 
which was often closely akin to tears. 

One morning, in the sorting room, I noticed 
a big, curly-haired fellow who had lost a foot, 
and had all sorts of wounds and fractures in 
both legs. All these had been hastily bound 
up, clothing and all, in the hollow of the 
stretcher, which was stiff with blood. When 
I called the stretcher-bearers and contemplated 
this picture, the big man raised himself on his 
elbow and said: 



VERDUN 127 

"Please give me a cigarette." 

Then he began to smoke, smiling cheer- 
fully and telling absurd stories. We took off 
one of his legs up to the thigh, and as soon 
as he recovered consciousness, he asked for 
another cigarette, and set all the orderlies 
laughing. 

When, on leaving him, I asked this extraor- 
dinary man what his calling was, he replied 
modestly : 

"I am one of the employees of the Vichy 
Company." 

The orderlies in particular, nearly all sim- 
ple folks, had a desire to laugh, even when 
they were worn out with fatigue, which made 
a pretext of the slightest thing, and notably 
of danger. One of them, called Tailleur, a 
buffoon with the airs of an executioner's as- 
sistant, would call out at the first explosions 
of a hurricane of shells: 

"Number your arms and legs! Look out 
for your nuts! The winkles are tumbling 
about!" 

All my little band would begin to laugh. 
And I had not the heart to check them, for 
their faces were drawn with fatigue, and this 



128 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

moment of doleful merriment at least pre- 
vented them from falling asleep as they 
stood. 

When the explosions came very close, this 
same Tailleur could not help exclaim- 
ing: 

"I am not going to be killed by a brick! I 
am going outside." 

I would look at him with a smile, and he 
would repeat: "As 'for me, I'm off," care- 
fully rolling a bandage the while, which he did 
with great dexterity. 

His mixture of terror and swagger was a 
perpetual entertainment to us. One night, a 
hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of 
the wounded. In defiance of orders, Tailleur, 
who knew nothing at all about the handling 
of such things, turned it over and examined 
it for some time, with comic curiosity and dis- 
trust. 

One day a pig intended for our consump- 
tion was killed in the pig-sty by fragments 
of shell. We ate it, and the finding by one 
of the orderlies of some bits of metal in his 
portion of meat gave occasion for a great 
many jests. 



VERDUN 129 

For a fortnight we were unable to go be- 
yond the hospital enclosure. Our longest ex- 
pedition was to the piece of waste ground 
which had been allotted to us for a burial 
ground, a domain the shells were always 
threatening to plough up. This graveyard in- 
creased considerably. As it takes a man eight 
hours to dig a grave for his brother man, one 
had to set a numerous gang to work all day, 
to ensure a place for each corpse. 

Sometimes we went into the wooden shed 
which served as our mortuary. Pere Duval, 
the oldest of our orderlies, sewed there all 
day, making shrouds of coarse linen for "his 
dead." 

They were laid in the earth carefully, side 
by side, their feet together, their hands 
crossed on their breasts, when indeed they 
still possessed hands and feet. . . . Duval 
also looked after the human debris, and gave 
it decent sepulture. 

Thus our function was not only to tend the 
living, but also to honour the dead. The care 
of what was magniloquently termed their 

"estate" fell to our manager, S . It was 

he who put into a little canvas bag all the 



130 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
papers and small possessions found on the 
victims. He devoted days and nights to a 
kind of funereal bureaucracy, inevitable even 
under the fire of the enemy. His occupation, 
moreover, was not exempt from moral diffi- 
culties. Thus he found in the pocket of one 
dead man a woman's card which it was im- 
possible to send on to his family, and in an- 
other case, a collection of songs of such a 
nature that after due deliberation it was de- 
cided to burn them. 

Let us purify the memories of our martyrs ! 



We had several German wounded to at- 
tend. One of these, whose leg I had to take 
off, overwhelmed me with thanks in his na- 
tive tongue; he had lain for six days on 
ground over which artillery played unceas- 
ingly, and contemplated his return to life and 
the care bestowed on him with a kind of stu- 
pefaction. 

Another, who had a shattered arm, gave us 
a good deal of trouble by his amazing un- 
cleanliness. Before giving him the anaesthetic, 
the orderly took from his mouth a set of false 



VERDUN 131< 

teeth, which he confessed he had not removed 
for several months, and which exhaled an 
unimaginable stench. 

I remember, too, a little fair-haired chap of 
rather chilly demeanour, who suddenly said 
"Good-bye" to me with lips that quivered like 
those of a child about to cry. 

The interpreter from Headquarters, my 

friend C , came to see them all as soon as 

they had got over their stupor, and interro- 
gated them with placid patience, comparing 
all their statements in order to glean some 
trustworthy indication. 



Thus days and nights passed by in ceaseless 
toil, under a perpetual menace, in the midst 
of an ever-growing fatigue which gave things 
the substance and aspects they take on in a 
nightmare. 

The very monotony of this existence was 
made up of a thousand dramatic details, each 
of which would have been an event in normal 
life. I still see, as through the mists of a 
dream, the orderly of a dying captain sobbing 
at his bedside and covering his hands with 



132 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
kisses. I still hear the little lad whose life 
blood had ebbed away, saying to me in im- 
ploring tones: "Save me, Doctor! Save me 
for my mother!" . . . and I think a man 
must have heard such words in such a place 
to understand them aright, I think that every 
day this man must gain a stricter, a more pre- 
cise, a more pathetic idea of suffering and of 
death. 

One Sunday evening, the bombardment was 
renewed with extraordinary violence. We had 

just sent off General S , who was smoking 

on his stretcher, and chatting calmly and 
cheerfully; I was operating on an infantryman 
who had deep wounds in his arms and thighs. 
Suddenly there was a great commotion. A 
hurricane of shells fell upon the hospital. 
I heard a crash which shook the ground and 
the walls violently, then hurried footsteps and 
cries in the passage. 

I looked at the man sleeping and breathing 
heavily, and I almost envied his forgetfulness 
of all things, the dissolution of his being in a 
darkness so akin to liberating death. My 
task completed, I went out to view the dam- 
age. 



VERDUN 133 

A shell had fallen on an angle of the 
building, blowing in the windows of three 
wards, scattering stones in all directions, 
and riddling walls and ceilings with large 
fragments of metal. The wounded were 
moaning, shrouded in acrid smoke. They 
were lying so close to the ground that they 
had been struck only by plaster and splinters 
of glass; but the shock had been so great 
that nearly all of them died within the 
following hour. 

The next day it was decided that we should 
change our domicile, and we made ready to 
carry off our wounded and remove our hospital 
to a point rather more distant. 

It was a very clear day. In front of us, 
the main road was covered with men, whom 
motor vehicles were depositing in groups every 
minute. We were finishing our final operations 
and looking out occasionally at these men 
gathered in the sun, on the slopes and in the 
ditches. At about one o'clock in the afternoon 
the air was rent by the shriek of high explo- 
sives and some shells fell in the midst of the 
groups. We saw them disperse through the 
yellowish smoke, and go to lie down a little 



134 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

farther off in the fields. Some did not even 
stir. Stretcher-bearers came up at once, 
running across the meadow, and brought us 
two dead men, and nine wounded, who were 
laid on the operating-table. 

As we tended them during the following 
hour we looked anxiously at the knots of men 
who remained in the open, and gradually in- 
creased, and we asked whether they would not 
soon go. But there they stayed, and again we 
heard the dull growl of the discharge, then the 
whistling overhead, and the explosions of 
some dozen shells falling upon the men. 
Crowding to the window, we watched the 
massacre, and waited to receive the victims. 

My colleague M drew my attention to a 

soldier who was running up the grassy slope 
on the other side of the road, and whom the 
shells seemed to be pursuing. 

These were the last wounded we received 
in the suburb of G . Three hours after- 
wards, we took up the same life and the same 
labours again, some way off, for many weeks 
more. . . . 

Thus things went on, until the day when we, 
in our turn, were carried off by the automobiles 



VERDUN 135 

of the Grand' Route, and landed on the banks 
of a fair river in a village where there were 
trees in blossom, and where the next morning 
we were awakened by the sound of bells and 
the voices of women. 



THE SACRIFICE 

WE had had all the windows opened. 
From their beds, the wounded could 
see, through the dancing waves of 
heat, the heights of Berru and Nogent 
l'Abbesse, the towers of the Cathedral, still 
crouching like a dying lion in the middle of 
the plain of Reims, and the chalky lines of the 
trenches intersecting the landscape. 

A kind of torpor seemed to hang over the 
battle-field. Sometimes, a perpendicular col- 
umn of smoke rose up, in the motionless 
distance, and the detonation reached us a little 
while afterwards, as if astray, and ashamed 
of outraging the radiant silence. 

It was one of the fine days of the summer of 
19 1 5, one of those days when the supreme 
indifference of Nature makes one feel the 
burden of war more cruelly, when the beauty 
of the sky seems to proclaim its remoteness 
from the anguish of the human heart. 

We had finished our morning round when 
an ambulance drew up at the entrance. 
136 



THE SACRIFICE 137/ 

"Doctor on duty!" 

I went down the steps. The chauffeur 
explained : 

"There are three slightly wounded men. 
I am going to take on further, and then there 
are some severely wounded . . ." 

He opened the back of his car. On one 
side three soldiers were seated, dozing. On 
the other, there were stretchers, and I saw 
the feet of the men lying upon them. Then, 
from the depths of the vehicle came a low, 
grave, uncertain voice which said: 

"I am one of the severely wounded, Mon- 



sieur." 



He was a lad rather than a man. He had 
a little soft down on his chin, a well-cut 
aquiline nose, dark eyes to which extreme 
weakness gave an appearance of exaggerated 
size, and the grey pallor of those who have 
lost much blood. 

"Oh! how tired I am!" he said. 

He held on to the stretcher with both 
hands as he was carried up the steps. He 
raised his head a little, gave a glance full of 
astonishment, distress, and lassitude at the 
green trees, the smiling hills, the glowing 



138 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

horizon, and then he found himself inside the 
house. 

Here begins the story of Gaston Leglise. 
It is a modest story and a very sad story; 
but indeed, are there any stories now in the 
world that are not sad? 

I will tell it day by day, as we lived it, as 
it is graven in my memory, and as it is graven 
in your memory and in your flesh, my friend 
Leglise. 

* ♦ * 

Leglise only had a whiff of chloroform, and 
he fell at once into a sleep closely akin to 
death. 

"Let us make haste," said the head doctor. 
"We shall have the poor boy dying on the 
table. ,, 

Then he shook his head, adding: 

"Both knees! Both knees! What a fu- 
ture!" 

The burden of experience is a sorrowful 
one. It is always sorrowful to have sufficient 
memory to discern the future. 

Small splinters from a grenade make very 
little wounds in a man's legs; but great 
disorders may enter by way of those little 



THE SACRIFICE 139 

wounds, and the knee is such a complicated, 
delicate marvel! 

Corporal Leglise is in bed now. He breathes 
with difficulty, and catches his breath now and 
again like a person who has been sobbing. 
He looks about him languidly, and hardly 
seems to have made up his mind to live. He 
contemplates the bottle of serum, the tubes, 
the needles, all the apparatus set in motion to 
revive his fluttering heart, and he seems bowed 
down by grief. He wants something to drink, 
but he must not have anything yet; he wants 
to sleep, but we have to deny sleep to those 
who need it most; he wants to die perhaps, 
and we will not let him. 

He sees again the listening post where he 
spent the night, in advance of all his comrades. 
He sees again the narrow doorway bordered 
by sandbags through which he came out at 
dawn to breathe the cold air and look at the 
sky from the bottom of the communication- 
trench. All was quiet, and the early summer 
morning was sweet even in the depths of the 
trench. But some one was watching and 
listening for the faint sound of his footsteps. 
An invisible hand hurled a bomb. He rushed 



140 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

back to the door; but his pack was on his 
back, and he was caught in the aperture like 
a rat in a trap. The air was rent by the 
detonation, and his legs were rent, like the 
pure air, like the summer morning, like the 
lovely silence. 

* * * 

The days pass, and once more, the coursing 
blood begins to make the vessels of the neck 
throb, to tinge the lips, and give depth and 
brilliance to the eye. 

Death, which had overrun the whole body 
like an invader, retired, yielding ground by 
degrees; but it has halted now, and makes a 
stand at the legs; these it will not relinquish; 
it demands something by way of spoil; it will 
not be baulked of its prey entirely. 

We fight for the portion Death has chosen. 
The wounded Corporal looks on at our labours 
and our efforts, like a poor man who has placed 
his cause in the hands of a knight, and who can 
only be a spectator of the combat, can only 
pray and wait. 

* * * 

We shall have to give the monster a share; 



THE SACRIFICE 141 

one of the legs must go. Now another struggle 
begins with the man himself. Several times 
a slay I go and sit by his bed. All our attempts 
air conversation break down one by one. We 
always end in the same silence and anxiety. 
To-day Leglise said to me: 

"Oh! I know quite well what you're 
thinking about!" 

As I made no answer, he intreated: 

"Perhaps we could wait a little longer? 
Perhaps to-morrow I may be better . . . 

Then suddenly, in great confusion: 

"Forgive me. I do trust you all. I know 
what you do is necessary. But perhaps it 
will not be too late in two or three days. . . ." 

Two or three days ! We will see to-morrow. 

The nights are terribly hot; I suffer for 
his sake. 

I come to see him in the evening for the last 
time, and encourage him to sleep. But his 
eyes are wide open in the night and I feel 
that they are anxiously fixed on mine. 

Fever makes his voice tremble. 

"How can I sleep with all the things I am 
thinking about?" 

Then he adds faintly: 



142 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"Must you? Must you?" 
The darkness gives me courage, and I nod 
my head: "Yes!" 



As I finish his dressings, I speak from the 
depths of my heart: 

"Leglise, we will put you to sleep to-mor- 
row. We will make an examination without 
letting you suffer, and we will do what is 
necessary." 

"I know quite well that you will take it 
off." 

"We shall do what we must do." 

I divine that the corners of his mouth are 
drawn down a little, and that his lips are 
quivering. He thinks aloud: 

"If only the other leg was all right!" 

I have been thinking of that too, but I 
pretend not to have heard. Sufficient unto 
the day is the evil thereof. 

I spend part of the afternoon sewing pieces 
of waterproof stuff together. He asks me: 

"What are you doing?'* 

"I am making you a mask, to give you 
ether." 



THE SACRIFICE 143 

"Thank you; I can't bear the smell of 
chloroform. " 

I answer "Yes, that's why." The real 
reason is that we are not sure he could bear 
the brutal chloroform, in his present state. 

Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this 
morning. He was still unconscious when we 
carried him into the dark room to examine 
his other leg under the X-rays. 

He was already beginning to moan and to 
open his eyes, and the radiographer was not 
hurrying. I did all I could to hasten the 
business, and to get him back into his bed. 
Thus he regained consciousness in bright sun- 
shine. 

What would he, who once again was so 
close to the dark kingdom, have thought if he 
had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows, 
full of whisperings, sparks and flashes of light? 

As soon as he could speak, he said to me: 

"You have cut off my leg?" 

I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his 
head was low, the great tears trickled on to 
the pillow. 



144 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

To-day he is calmer. The first dressings 
were very painful. He looked at the raw, 
bloody, oozing stump, trembling, and said: 

"It looks pretty horrible!" 

We took so many precautions that now he 
is refreshed for a few hours. 

"They say you are to have the Military 
Medal," the head doctor told him. 

Leglise confided to me later, with some 
hesitation : 

"I don't' suppose they would really give me 
the medal!" 

"And why not?" 

"I was punished; one of my men had some 
buttons off his overcoat." 

Oh, my friend, scrupulous lad, could I love 
my countrymen if they could remember those 
wretched buttons for an instant? 

"My men!" he said gravely. I look at his 
narrow chest, his thin face, his boyish forehead 
with the serious furrow on it of one who 
accepts all responsibilities, and I do not know 
how to show him my respect and affection. 

* * * 

Leglise's fears were baseless. General G 



THE SACRIFICE 145 

arrived just now. I met him on the terrace. 
His face pleased me. It was refined and in- 
telligent. 

"I have come to see Corporal Leglise," he 
said. 

I took him into the ward, full of wounded 
men, and he at once went towards Leglise 
unhesitatingly, as if he knew him perfectly. 

"How are you?" he asked, taking the 
young man's hand. 

"Mon General, they've cut off my leg . . ." 

"Yes, yes, I know, my poor fellow. And 
I have brought you the Military Medal." 

He pinned it on to Leglise's shirt, and 
kissed my friend on both cheeks, simply and 
affectionately. 

Then he talked to him again for a few 
minutes. 

I was greatly pleased. Really, this General 
is one of the right sort. 

* * * 

The medal has been wrapped in: a bit of 
muslin, so that the flies may not soil it, and 
hung on the wall over the bed. It seems to be 
watching over the wounded man, to be looking 
on at what is happening. Unfortunately, 



146 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

what it sees is sad enough. The right leg, 
the only leg, is giving us trouble now. The 
knee is diseased, it is in a very bad state, and 
all we have done to save it seems to have been 
in vain. Then a sore has appeared on the 
back, and then another sore. Every morning, 
we pass from one misery to another, telling 
the beads of suffering in due order. 

So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise 
would certainly be dead. I see him still, 
opening his eyes desperately and checking the 
scream that rises to his lips. Oh! I thought 
indeed that he was going to die. But his 
agony demands full endurance; it does not 
even stupefy those it assails. 

I call on every one for help. 

u Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of 
you." 

Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, 
to support Leglise, to hold him, to soothe him. 
A minute of his endurance is equal to ten 
years of such effort as ours. 

Alas! were there a hundred of us he would 
still have to bear the heaviest burden alone. 

All humanity at this hour is bearing a very 
cruel burden. Every minute aggravates its 



THE SACRIFICE 147 

sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its 

aid? 

* * * 

We made an examination of the wounded 
man, together with our chief, who muttered 
almost inaudibly between his teeth: 

u He must be prepared for another sacrifice." 

Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely con- 
summated. 

But Leglise understood. He no longer 
weeps. He has the weary and somewhat 
bewildered look of the man who is rowing 
against the storm. I steal a look at him, 
and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute 
voice : 

"I would nuch rather die." 

I go into the garden. It is a brilliant 
morning, but I can see nothing, I want to see 
nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro: 

"He would much rather die." 

And I ask despairingly whether he is not 
right perhaps. 

All the poplars rustle softly. With one 
voice, the voice of Summer itself, they say: 
"No! No! He is not right!" 

A little beetle crosses the path before me. 



148 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

I step on it unintentionally, but it flies away 
in desperate haste. It too has answered in 
its own way: "No, really, your friend is not 
right." 

"Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of 
insects that buzz about the lime-tree. 

And even a loud roar from the guns that 
travels across the landscape seems to say 
gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!" 



During the evening the chief came back to 
see Leglise, who said to him with the same 
mournful gravity: 

"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die." 

We go down into the garden, and the chief 
says a strange thing to me: 

"Try to convince him. I begin at last to 
feel ashamed of demanding such a sacrifice 
from him." 

And I too . . . am I not ashamed? 

I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am 
quite sure now that he is wrong, but I don't 
know how to tell him so. What can I offer 
him in exchange for the thing I am about to 
ask him? Where shall I find the words that 



THE SACRIFICE 149 

induce a man to live? Oh you, all things 
around me, tell me, repeat to me that it is 
sweet to live, even with a body so grievously 
mutilated. 

This morning I extracted a little projectile 
from one of his wounds. He secretly con- 
cluded that this would perhaps make the 
great operation unnecessary, and it hurt me 
to see his joy. I could not leave him this 
satisfaction. 

The struggle began again; this time it was 
desperate. For we have no time to lose. 
Every hour of delay exhausts our man fur- 
ther. A few days more, and there will be 
no choice open to him : only death, after a long 
ordeal. . . . 

He repeats : 

"I am not afraid, but I would rather die." 

Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate 
of Life. Who gave me this right? Who gave 
me eloquence? The things I said were just 
the right things, and they came so readily 
that now and then I was afraid of holding out 
so sure a promise of a life I am not certain 
I can preserve, of guaranteeing a future that 
is not in man's hands. 



150 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. 
There is something in Leglise which involun- 
tarily sides with me and pleads with me. 
There are moments when he does not know 
what to say, and formulates trivial objec- 
tions, just because there are others so much 
weightier. 

"I live with my mother," he says. "I am 
twenty years old. What work is there for a 
cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty 
and misery?" 

"Leglise, all France owes you too much, 
she would blush not to pay her debt." 

And I promise again, in the name of our 
country, sure that she will never fall short of 
what I undertake for her. The whole French 
nation is behind me at this moment, silently 
ratifying my promise. 

We are at the edge of the terrace; evening 
has come. I hold his burning wrist in which 
the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. 
The night is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets 
rise above the hills, and fall slowly bathing the 
horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the 
guns flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In 
spite of all this, in spite of war, the night is 



THE SACRIFICE 151 

like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes 
it in to his wasted breast in long draughts, 
and says : 

"Oh, I don't know, I don't know! . . . 
Wait another day, please, please. . . ." 



We waited three whole days, and then 
Leglise gave in. 

"Well, do what you must. Do what you 
like." 

On the morning of the operation, he asked 
to be carried down to the ward by the steps 
into the park. I went with him, and I saw 
him looking at all things round him, as if 
taking them to witness. 

If only, only it is not too late! 

Again he was laid on the table. Again we 
cut through flesh and bones. The second leg 
was amputated at the thigh. 

I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, 
and he was so light, so light. . . . 

This time when he woke he asked no 
question. But I saw his hands groping to 
feel where his body ended. 



152 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

A few days have passed since the operation. 
We have done all it was humanly possible to 
do, and Leglise comes back to life with a kind 
of bewilderment. 

"I thought I should have died," he said to 
me this morning, while I was encouraging him 
to eat. 

He added: 

"When I went down to the operation-ward, 
I looked well at everything, and I thought it 
was for the last time." 

"Look, dear boy. Everything is just the 
same, just as beautiful as ever." 

"Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, 
"I had made up my mind to die." 

To make up one's mind to die is to take a 
certain resolution, in the hope of becoming 
quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man 
who makes up his mind to die severs a good 
many ties, and indeed actually dies to some 
extent. . 

With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I 
were asking a question: 

"It is always good to eat, to drink, to 
breathe, to see the light. . . . 

He does not answer. He is dreaming. 



THE SACRIFICE 153 

I spoke too soon. I go away, still anx- 
ious. 

* * * 

We have some bad moments yet, but the 
fever gradually abates. I have an impression 
that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely, 
like one who has given all he had to give, and 
fears nothing further. 

When I have finished the dressing, I turned 
him over on his side, to ease his sore back. 
He smiled for the first time this morning, 
saying : 

"I have already gained something by get- 
ting rid of my legs. I can lie on my side 
now." 

But he cannot balance himself well; he is 
afraid of falling. 

Think of him, and you will be afraid with 
him and for him. 

Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad day- 
light and dozes for a few minutes. He has 
shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of 
gauze over his face, as one does to a child, 
to keep the flies off. I bring him a little bottle 
of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they help him 
to bear the final assaults of the fever. 



154 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

He begins to smoke again. We smoke 

together on the terrace, where I have had his 

bed brought. I show him the garden and say: 

"In a few days, I will carry you down into 

the garden.' ' 

* * * 

He is anxious about his neighbours, asks 
their names, and inquires about their wounds. 
For each one he has a compassionate word 
that comes from the depths of his being. He 
says to me: 

"I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor 
Camus !" 

His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad 
to see them. He had not cried for so long. 
He adds: 

"Excuse me, I used to see Camus some- 
times. It's so sad." 

He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is 
touched by all he sees around him, by the 
sufferings of others, by their individual mis- 
fortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, 
exalted by a great crisis. 

When he speaks of his own case, it is always 
to make light of his misfortune: 

"Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's 



THE SACRIFICE 155 

lucky for me that none of my organs are 
touched; I can't complain." 

I watch him * with admiration, but I am 
waiting for something more, something 
more. . . . 

His chief crony is Legrand. 

Legrand is a stonemason with a face like 
a young girl. He has lost a big piece of his 
skull. He has also lost the use of language, 
and we teach him words, as to a baby. He is 
beginning to get up now, and he hovers round 
Leglise's bed to perform little services for him. 
He tries to master his rebellious tongue, but 
failing in the attempt, he smiles, and expresses 
himself with a limpid glance, full of intelligence. 

Leglise pities him too: 

"It must be wretched not to be able to 
speak." 

* :je * 

To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed 
heartily, Leglise, the orderlies and I. 

We were talking of his future pension while 
the dressings were being prepared, and some- 
one said to him : 

"You will live like a little man of means." 

Leglise looked at his body and answered: 



156 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
"Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man." 
The dressing went off very well. To make 
our task easier, Leglise suggested that he 
should hold on to the head of the bed with 
both hands and throw himself back on his 
shoulders, holding his stumps up in the air. 
It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but 
he began to laugh, and the spectacle became 
comic. We all laughed. But the dressing 
was easy and was quickly finished. 

The stumps are healing healthily. In the 

afternoon, he sits up in bed. He begins to 

read and to smoke, chatting to his companions. 

I explain to him how he will be able to 

walk with artificial legs. He jokes again: 

"I was rather short before; but now I can 
be just the height I choose." 

JJC Jjl # 

I bring him some cigarettes that had been 
sent me for him, some sweets and dainties. 
He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to 
me, and says very softly: 

"I have far too many things. But Legrand 
is very badly off; his home is in the invaded 
district, and he has nothing, they can't send 
him anything." 



THE SACRIFICE 157 

I understand. I come back presently with 
a packet in which there are tobacco, some good 
cigarettes, and also a little note. . . . 

"Here is something for Legrand. You 
must give it to him. I'm off." 

In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and 
perplexed. 

"I can't give all this to Legrand myself, 
he would be offended." 

So then we have to devise a discreet method 
of presentation. 

It takes some minutes. He invents romantic 
possibilities. He becomes flushed, animated, 
interested. 

"Think," I say, "find a way. Give it to 
him yourself, from some one or other." 

But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding 
Legrand's susceptibilities. He ruminates on 
the matter till evening. 

The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's 
bed. Leglise calls my attention to it with his 
chin, and whispers: 

"I found some one to give it to him. He 
doesn't know who sent it. He has made all 
sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" 



t 158 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Oh, Leglise, can it be that there is still 
something amusing, and that it is to be kind? 
Isn't this alone enough to make it worth 
while to live ? 

So now we have a great secret between us. 
All the morning, as I come and go in the ward, 
he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to him- 
self. Legrand gravely offers me a cigarette; 
Leglise finds it hard not to burst out laughing. 
But he keeps his counsel. 

The orderlies have put him on a neighbour- 
ing bed while they make his. He stays there 
very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and 
sings a little song, like a child's cradle-song. 
Then, all of a sudden, he begins to cry, sobbing 
aloud. 

I put my arm round him and ask anxiously: 
"Why? What is the matter?" 
Then he answers in a broken voice : 
"I am crying with joy and thankfulness." 
Oh! I did not expect so much. But I am 
very happy, much comforted. I kiss him, 
he kisses me, and I think I cried a little too. 

* * * 

I have wrapped him in a flannel dressing- 



THE SACRIFICE 159 

gown, and I carry him in my arms. I go 
down the steps to the park very carefully, 
like a mother carrying her new-born babe for 
the first time, and I call out: "An arm-chair! 
An arm-chair." 

He clings to my neck as I walk, and says 
in some confusion: 

"I shall tire you." 

No indeed! I am too well pleased. I would 
not let any one take my place. The arm- 
chair has been set under the trees, near a grove. 
I deposit Leglise among the cushions. They 
bring him a kepi. He breathes the scent of 
green things, of the newly mown lawns, of the 
warm gravel. He looks at the fagade of the 
mansion, and says: 

"I had not even seen the place where I 
very nearly died." 

All the wounded who are walking about 

come and visit him; they almost seem to be 

paying him homage. He talks to them with 

a cordial authority. Is he not the chief 

among them, in virtue of his sufferings and 

his sacrifice? 

* * * 

Some one in the ward was talking this 



160 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

morning of love and marriage, and a 
home. 

I glanced at Leglise now and then; he 
seemed to be dreaming and he murmured: 

"Oh, for me, now . . ." 

Then I told him something I knew: I know 
young girls who have sworn to marry only a 
mutilated man. Well, we must believe in the 
vows of these young girls. France is a country 
richer in warmth of heart than in any other 
virtue. It is a blessed duty to give happiness 
to those who have sacrificed so much. And a 
thousand hearts, the generous hearts of women, 
applaud me at this moment. 

Leglise listens, shaking his head. He does 
not venture to say "No." 

* # # 

Leglise has not only the Military Medal, 
but also the War Cross. The notice has just 
come. He reads it with blushes. 

"I shall never dare to show this," he says; 
"it is a good deal exaggerated." 

He hands me the paper, which states, in 
substance, that Corporal Leglise behaved with 
great gallantry under a hail of bombs, and 
that his left leg has been amputated. 



THE SACRIFICE 161 

"I didn't behave with great gallantry," he 
says; "I was at my post, that's all. As to 
the bombs, I only got one." 

I reject this point of view summarily. 

"Wasn't it a gallant act to go to that ad- 
vanced post, so near the enemy, all alone, at 
the head of all the Frenchmen? Weren't 
they all behind you, to the very end of the 
country, right away to the Pyrenees? Did 
they not all rely on your coolness, your keen 
sight, your vigilance? You were only hit 
by one bomb, but I think you might have had 
several, and still be with us. And besides, 
the notice, far from being exaggerated, is 
really insufficient; it says you have lost a 
leg, whereas you have lost two! It seems to 
me that this fully compensates for anything 
excessive with regard to the bombs." 

"That's true!" agrees Leglise, laughing. 
"But I don't want to be made out a hero." 

"My good lad, people won't ask what you 
think before they appreciate and honour you. 
It will be quite enough to look at your body." 
* * * 

Then we had to part, for the war goes on, 
and every day there are fresh wounded. 



162 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Leglise left us nearly cured. He left with 
some comrades, and he was not the least 
lively of the group. 

"I was the most severely wounded man in 
the train," he wrote to me, not without a 
certain pride. 

Since then, Leglise has written to me often. 
His letters breathe a contented calm. I receive 
them among the vicissitudes of the campaign; 
on the highways, in wards where other wounded 
men are moaning, in fields scoured by the 
gallop of the cannonade. 

And always something beside me murmurs, 
mutely : 

"You see, you see, he was wrong when he 
said he would rather die." 

I am convinced of it, and this is why I have 
told your story. You will forgive me, won't 
you, Leglise, my friend? 



THE THIRD SYMPHONY 

EVERY morning the stretcher-bearers 
brought Vize-Feldwebel Spat down 
to the dressing ward, and his ap- 
pearance always introduced a certain chill in 
the atmosphere. 

There are some German wounded whom 
kind treatment, suffering, or some more ob- 
scure agency move to composition with the 
enemy, and who receive what we do for them 
with a certain amount of gratitude. Spat 
was not one of these. For weeks we had made 
strenuous efforts to snatch him from death, 
and then to alleviate his sufferings,' without 
eliciting the slightest sign of satisfaction from 
him, or receiving the least word of thanks. 

He could speak a little French, which he 
utilised strictly for his material wants, to 
say, for instance, "A little more cotton-wool 
under the foot, Monsieur," or, "Have I any 
fever to-day ?" 

Apart from this, he always showed us the 
same icy face, the same pale, hard eyes, en- 
163 



164. THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYBS 
framed by colourless lashes. We gathered, 
from certain indications, that the man was 
intelligent and well educated; but he was ob- 
viously under the domination of a lively hatred, 
and a strict sense of his own dignity. 

He bore pain bravely, and like one who 
makes it a point of honour to repress the most 
excusable reactions of the martyred flesh. 
I do not remember ever hearing him cry out, 
though this would have seemed to me natural 
enough, and would by no means have lowered 
Monsieur Spat in my opinion. All I ever 
heard from him was a stifled moan, the dull 
panting of the woodman as he swings his axe. 

One day we were obliged to give him an 
anaesthetic in order to make incisions in the 
wounds in his leg; he turned very red and 
said, in a tone that was almost imploring: 
"You won't cut it off, gentlemen, will you?'* 
But no sooner did he regain consciousness than 
he at once resumed his attitude of stiff hos- 
tility. 

After a time, I ceased to believe that his 
features could ever express anything but this 
repressed animosity. I was undeceived by 
an unforeseen incident. 



THE THIRD SYMPHONY 165 

The habit of whistling between one's teeth 
is a token, with me as with many other persons, 
of a certain absorption. It is perhaps rather 
a vulgar habit, but I often feel impelled to 
whistle, especially when I have a serious piece 
of work in hand. 

One morning accordingly, I was finishing 
Vize-Feldwebel Spat's dressing, and whistling 
something at random. I was looking at his 
leg, and was paying no attention to his face, 
when I suddenly became curiously aware that 
the look he had fixed upon me had changed in 
quality, and I raised my eyes. 

Certainly, something very extraordinary 
had taken place: the German's face glowed 
with a kind of warmth and contentment, and 
was so smiling and radiant that I hardly 
recognised it. I could scarcely believe that 
he had been able to improvise this face, which 
was sensitive and trustful, out of the features 
he generally showed us. 

"Tell me, Monsieur," he murmured, "it's 
the Third Symphony, isn't it, that you are 
. . . what do you call it?— yes . . . whistling. 

First, I stopped whistling. Then I an- 
swered: "Yes, I believe it is the Third 



166 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Symphony"; then I remained silent and con- 
fused. 

A slender bridge had just been flung across 
the abyss. 

The thing lasted for a few seconds, and I 
was still dreaming of it when once more I felt 
an icy, irrevocable shadow falling upon me*- 
the hostile glance of Herr Spat 



GRACE 

IT is a common saying that all men are 
equal in the presence of suffering, but 
I know very well that this is not true. 

Auger! Auger I humble basket-maker of 
La Charente, who are you, you who seem able 
to suffer without being unhappy? Why are 
you touched with grace, whereas Gregoire is 
not? Why are you the prince of a world in 
which Gregoire is merely a pariah? 

Kind ladies who pass through the wards 
where the wounded lie, and give them cig- 
arettes and sweet-meats, come with me. . 

We will go through the large ward on the 
first floor, where the windows are caressed by 
the boughs of chestnut-trees. I will not 
point out Auger, you will give him the lion's 
share of the cigarettes and sweets of your own 
accord? but if I don't point out Gregoire, you 
will leave without noticing him, and he will 
get no sweets, and will have nothing to smoke. 
* * * 

It is not because of this that I call Gregoire 

167 



168 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
a pariah. It is because of a much sadder and 
more intimate thing . . . Gregoire lacks en- 
durance, he is not what we call a good patient. 

In a general way those who tend the 
wounded call the men who do not give them 
much trouble "good patients." Judged by 
this standard, every one in the hospital will 
tell you that Gregoire is not a good patient. 

All day long, he lies on his left side, because 
of his wound, and stares at the wall. I 
said to him a day or two after he came : 

"I am going to move you and put you over 
in the other corner; there you will be able to 
see your comrades." 

He answered, in his dull, surly voice: 

"It's not worth while. I'm all right here." 

"But you can see nothing but the wall." 

"That's quite enough." 

Scarcely have the stretcher-bearers touched 
his bed, when Gregoire begins to cry out in a 
doleful, irritable tone: 

"Ah! don't shake me like that! Ah, you 
mustn't touch me." 

The stretcher-bearers I give him are very 
gentle fellows, and he always has the same: 
Paffin, a fat shoe-maker with a stammer, and 



GRACE 169 

Monsieur Bouin, a professor of mathematics, 
with a grey beard and very precise movements. 

They take hold of Gregoire most carefully 
to lay him on the stretcher. The wounded 
man criticises all their movements peevishly: 

"Ah! don't turn me over like that. And 
you must hold my leg better than that!" 

The sweat breaks out on Paffin's face. 
Monsieur Bouin's eye-glasses fall off. At last 
they bring the patient along. 

As soon as he comes into the dressing ward, 
Gregoire is pale and perspiring. His harsh 
tawny beard quivers, hair by hair. I divine 
all this, and say a few words of encouragement 
to him from afar. 

"I shan't be long with you this morning, 
Gregoire. You won't have time to say 
W!" 

He preserves a sulky silence, full of reserva- 
tions. He looks like a condemned criminal 
awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied 
that he does not even answer when the sar- 
castic Sergeant says as he passes him : 

u Ah! here's our grouser." 

At last he is laid on the table which the 
wounded men call the "billiard-table." 



170 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Then, things become very trying. I feel at 
once that whatever I do, Gregoire will suffer. 
I uncover the wound in his thigh, and he 
screams. I wash the wound carefully, and he 
screams. I probe the wound, from which I 
remove small particles of bone, very gently, 
and he utters unimaginable yells. I see his 
tongue trembling in his open mouth. His 
hands tremble in the hands that hold them. 
I have an impression that every fibre of his 
body trembles, that the raw flesh of the 
wound trembles and retracts. In spite of my 
determination, this misery affects me, and I 
wonder whether I too shall begin to tremble 
sympathetically. I say: 

"Try to be patient, my poor Gregoire." 

He replies in a voice hoarse with pain and 
terror: "I can't help it." 

I add, just to say something: "Courage, 
a little courage." 

He does not even answer, and I feel that to 
exhort him to show courage, is to recommend 
an impossible thing, as if I were to advise him 
to have black eyes instead of his pale blue 
ones. 

The dressing is completed in an atmosphere 



GRACE 171 

of general discomfort. Nothing could per- 
suade me that Gregoire does not cordially 
detest me at this moment. While they are 
carrying him away, I ask myself bitterly why 
Gregoire is so deficient in grace, why he cannot 
suffer decently? 

The Sergeant says, as he sponges the table: 
"He's working against one all the time." 
Well, the Sergeant is wrong. Gregoire is 
not deliberately hostile. Sometimes I divine, 
when he knits his brows, that he is making 
an effort to resist suffering, to meet it with a 
stouter and more cheerful heart. But he does 
not know how to set about it. 

If you were asked to lift a railway-engine, 
you would perhaps make an effort; but you 
would do so without confidence and without 
success. So you must not say hard things of 
Gregoire. 

Gregoire is unable to bear suffering, just as 
one is unable to talk an unknown language. 
And, then, it is easier to learn Chinese than to 
learn the art of suffering. 

When I say that he is unable to bear suffer- 
ing, I really mean that he has to suffer a great 
deal more than others. ... I know the 



172 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

human body, and I cannot be deceived as to 
certain signs. 

Gregoire begins very badly. He reminds 
one of those children who have such a terror 
of dogs that they are bound to be bitten. 
Gregoire trembles at once. The dogs of pain 
throw themselves upon this defenceless man 
and pull him down. 



A great load of misery is heavy for a man to 
bear alone, but it is supportable when he is 
helped. Unfortunately Gregoire has no 
friends. He does nothing to obtain them, it 
almost seems as if he did not want any. 

He is not coarse, noisy and foul-mouthed, 
like the rascal Groult who amuses the whole 
ward. He is only dull and reserved. 

He does not often say "Thank you" when 
he is offered something, and many touchy 
people take offence at this. 

When I sit down by his bed, he gives no 
sign of any pleasure at my visit. I ask 
him: 

u What was your business in civil life?" 

He does not answer immediately. At last 



GRACE 173 

he says: "Odd jobs; I carried and loaded 
here and there." 

"Are you married?" 

"Yes." 

"Have you any children?" 

"Yes." 

"How many?" 

"Three." 

The conversation languishes. I get up and 
say: "Good-bye till to-morrow, Gregoire." 

"Ah! you will hurt me again to-morrow." 

I reassure him, or at least I try to reassure 
him. Then, that I may not go away leaving 
a bad impression, I ask: 

"How did you get wounded?" 

"Well, down there in the plain, with the 
others, . . ." 

That is all. I go away. Gregoire's eyes 
follow me for a moment, and I cannot even say 
whether he is pleased or annoyed by my visit. 

Good-bye, poor Gregoire. I cross the ward 
and go to sit down by Auger. 



Auger is busy writing up his "book." 

It is a big ledger some one has given him, in 



174 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

which he notes the important events of his 
life. 

Auger writes a round schoolboy hand. In 
fact, he can just write sufficiently well for his 
needs, I might almost say for his pleasure. 

"Would you care to look at my book?" 
he says, and he hands it to me with the air of 
a man who has no secrets. 

Auger receives many letters, and he copies 
them out carefully, especially when they are 
fine letters, full of generous sentiments. His 
lieutenant, for instance, wrote him a remark- 
able letter. 

He also copies into his book the letters he 
writes to his wife and his little girl. Then he 
notes the incidents of the day: "Wound dressed 
at 10 o'clock. The pus is diminishing. After 
dinner Madame la Princesse Moreau paid us 
a visit, and distributed caps all round; I got 
a fine green one. The little chap who had 
such a bad wound in the belly died at 2 
o'clock. . . ." 

Auger closes his book and puts it back under 
his bolster. 

He has a face that it does one good to look 
at. His complexion is warm and fresh ; his hair 



GRACE 175 

stiff and rather curly. He has a youthful 
moustache, a well-shaped chin, with a lively 
dimple in the middle, and eyes which seem to 
be looking out on a smiling landscape, gay 
with sunshine and running waters. 

"I am getting on splendidly," he says with 
great satisfaction. "Would you like to see 
Mariette?" 

He lifts up the sheet, and I see the apparatus 
in which we have placed the stump of his leg. 
It makes a kind of big white doll, which he 
takes in both hands with a laugh, and to which 
he has given the playful name of "Mariette." 

Auger was a sapper in the Engineers. A 
shell broke his thigh and tore off his foot. But 
as the foot was still hanging by a strip of flesh, 
Auger took out his pocket-knife, and got rid 
of it. Then he said to his terror-stricken 
comrades: "Well, boys, that's all right. It 
might have been worse. Now carry me some- 
where out of this." 

"Did you suffer terribly?" I asked him. 

"Well, Monsieur, not as much as you might 
think. Honestly, it did not hurt so very, very 
much. Afterwards, indeed, the pain was 
pretty bad." 



176 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

I understand why every one is fond of 
Auger. It is because he is reassuring. Seeing 
him and listening to him one opines that suffer- 
ing is not such a horrible thing after all. Those 
who live far from the battle-field, and visit 
hospitals to get a whiff of the war, look at 
Auger and go away well satisfied with every- 
thing: current events, him, and themselves. 
They are persuaded that the country is well 
defended, that our soldiers are brave, and that 
wounds and mutilations, though they may be 
serious things, are not unbearable. 



Yet pain has come to Auger as to the rest. 
But there is a way of taking it. 

He suffers in an enlightened, intelligent, 
almost methodical fashion. He does not 
confuse issues, and complain indiscriminately. 
Even when in the hands of others, he remains 
the man who had the courage to cut off his 
own foot, and finish the work of the shrapnel. 
He is too modest and respectful to give advice 
to the surgeon, but he offers him valuable 
information. 

He says: 



GRACE 177 

"Just there you are against the bone, it 
hurts me very much. Ah! there you can 
scrape, I don't feel it much. Take care! 
You're pressing rather too hard. All right: 
you can go on, I see what it's for. . . ." 

And this is how we work together. 

"What are you doing? Ah, you're washing 
it. I like that. It does me good. Good 
blood! Rub a little more just there. You 
don't know how it itches. Oh! if you're 
going to put the tube in, you must tell me, 
that I may hold on tight to the table." 

So the work gets on famously. Auger will 
make a rapid and excellent recovery. With 
him, one need never hesitate to do what is 
necessary. I wanted to give him an anaes- 
thetic before scraping the bone of his leg. He 
said: 

"I don't suppose it will be a very terrible 
business. If you don't mind, don't send me 
to sleep, but just do what is necessary. I 
will see to the rest." 

True, he could not help making a few 
grimaces. Then the Sergeant said to him: 

"Would you like to learn the song of the 
grunting pigs?" 



178 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"How does your song go?" 

The Sergeant begins in a high, shrill voice : 

Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne 
On entend les cochons . . . 
Cela prouve d'une facon certai-ai-ne 
Qu'ils non pas I'trood du . . . bouche. 

Auger begins to laugh; everybody laughs. 
And meanwhile we are bending over the 
wounded leg and our work gets on apace. 

"Now, repeat," says the Sergeant. 

He goes over it again, verse by verse, and 
Auger accompanies him. 

Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne . . . 

Auger stops now and then to make a slight 
grimace. Sometimes, too, his voice breaks. 
He apologises simply: 

"I could never sing in tune." 

Nevertheless, the song is learnt, more or 
less, and when the General comes to visit the 
hospital, Auger says to him: 

"Mon General, I can sing you a fine song." 

And he would, the rascal, if the head doctor 
did not look reprovingly at him. 



GRACE 179 

It is very dismal, after this, to attend to 
Gregoire, and to hear him groaning: 

"Ah! don't pull like that. You're dragging 
out my heart." 

I point out that if he won't let us attend to 
him, he will become much worse. Then he 
begins to cry. 

"What do I care, since I shall die anyhow?" 

He has depressed the orderlies, the stretcher- 
bearers, everybody. He does not discourage 
me; but he gives me a great deal of trouble. 

All you gentlemen who meet together to 
discuss the causes of the war, the end of the 
war, the using-up of effectives and the future 
bases of society, excuse me if I do not give you 
my opinion on these grave questions. I am 
really too much taken up with the wound of 
our unhappy Gregoire. 

It is not satisfactory, this wound, and when 
I look at it, I cannot think of anything else; 
the screams of the wounded man would pre- 
vent me from considering the conditions of 
the decisive battle and the results of the re- 
arrangement of the map of Europe with suffi- 
cient detachment. 

Listen : Gregoire tells me he is going to die. 



180 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

I think and believe that he is wrong. But he 

certainly will die if I do not take it upon myself 

to make him suffer. He will die, because every 

one is forsaking him. And he has long ago 

forsaken himself. 

* * # 

"My dear chap," remarked Auger to a 
very prim orderly, "it is no doubt unpleasant 
to have only one shoe to put on, but it gives 
one a chance of saving. And now, moreover, I 
only run half as much risk of scratching my 
wife with my toe-nails in bed as you do. . . ." 

"Quite so," added the Sergeant; "with 
Mariette he will caress his good lady, so to 
speak." 

Auger and the Sergeant crack jokes like 
two old cronies. The embarrassed orderly, 
failing to find a retort, goes away laughing con- 
strainedly. 

I sat down by Auger, and we were left alone. 

"I am a basket-maker," he said gravely. I 
shall be able to take up my trade again more 
or less. But think of workers on the land, like 
Groult, who has lost a hand, and Lerondeau, 
with his useless leg! . . . That's really ter- 
rible !" 



GRACE 181 

Auger rolls his r's in a way that gives 
piquancy and vigour to his conversation. He 
talks of others with a natural magnanimity 
which comes from the heart, like the expression 
of his eyes, and rings true, like the sound of his 
voice. And then again, he really need not 
envy any one. Have I not said it! He is a 
prince. 

"I have had some very grand visitors," he 
says. "Look, another lady came a little while 
ago, and left me this big box of sweets. Do 
take one, Monsieur, it would be a pleasure to 
me. And please, will you hand them round 
to the others, from me?" 

He adds in a lower tone: 

"Look under my bed. I put everything I 
am given there. Really, there's too much. 
I'm ashamed. There are some chaps here 
who never get anything, and they were brave 
fellows who did their duty just as well as I 
did." 

It is true, there are many brave soldiers in 
the ward, but only one Military Medal was 
given among them, and it came to Auger. 
Its arrival was the occasion of a regular little 
fete; his comrades all took part in it cor- 



182 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
dially, for strange to say, no one is jealous of 
Auger. A miracle indeed! Did you ever 
hear of any other prince of whom no one was 
jealous? 

"Are you going?" said Auger. "Please 
just say a few words to Groult. He is a bit 
of a grouser, but he likes a talk." 
* * * 

Auger has given me a lesson. I will go and 
smoke a cigarette with Groult, and above all, 
I will go and see Gregoire. 

Groult, indeed, is not altogether neglected. 
He is an original, a perverse fellow. He is 
pointed out as a curious animal. He gets his 
share of presents and attention. 

But no one knows anything about Gregoire; 
he lies staring at the wall, and growing thinner 
every day, and Death seems the only person 
who is interested in him. 

You shall not die, Gregoire ! I vow to keep 
hold of you, to suffer with you, and to endure 
your ill-temper humbly. You, who seem to be 
bearing the misery of an entire world, shall not 
be miserable all alone. 

Kind ladies who come to see our wounded 
and give them picture-books, tri-coloured 



GRACE 183 

caps and sweetmeats, do not forget Gregoire, 
who is wretched. Above all, give him your 
sweetest smiles. 

You go away well pleased with yourselves 
because you have been generous to Auger. 
But there is no merit in being kind to Auger. 
With a single story, a single clasp of his hand, 
he gives you much more than he received from 
you. He gives you confidence; he restores 
your peace of mind. 

Go and see Gregoire who has nothing but his 
suffering to give, and who very nearly gave 
his life. 

If you go away without a smile for Gregoire, 
you may fear that you have not fulfilled your 
task. And don't expect him to return your 
smile, for where would your liberality be in 
that case? 

It is easy to pity Auger, who needs no pity. 
It is difficult to pity Gregoire, and yet he is so 
pitiable. 

Do not forget; Auger is touched with grace; 
but Gregoire will be damned if you do not hold 
out your hand to him. 

God Himself, who has withheld grace from 
the damned, must feel pity for them. 



184 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

It is a very artless desire for equality which 
makes us say that all men are equal in the 
presence of suffering. No! no! they are not. 
And as we know nothing of Death but that 
which precedes and determines it, men are not 
even equal in the presence of Death. 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 



ONE more glance into the dark ward, 
in which something begins to reign 
which is not sleep, but merely a kind 
of nocturnal stupor. 

The billiard-table has been pushed into a 
corner; it is loaded with an incoherent mass 
of linen, bottles, and articles of furniture. A 
smell of soup and excrements circulates be- 
tween the stretchers, and seems to insult the 
slender onyx vases that surmount the cab- 
inet. 

And now, quickly! quickly! Let us escape 
on tiptoe into the open air. 

The night is clear and cold, without a breath 
of wind: a vast block of transparent ice 
between the snow and the stars. Will it 
suffice to cleanse throat and lungs, nauseated 
by the close effluvium of suppurating wounds? 

The snow clings and balls under our sabots. 
How good it would be to have a game. . . . 
185 



186 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

But we are overwhelmed by a fatigue that 
has become a kind of exasperation. We will 
go to the end of the lawn. 

Here is the great trench in which the refuse 
of the dressing-ward, all the residuum of 
infection, steams and rots. Further on we 
come to the musical pines, which Dalcour the 
miner visits every night, lantern in hand, 
to catch sparrows, Dalcour, the formidable 
Zouave, whom no one can persuade not to 
carry about his stiff leg and the gaping wound 
in his bandaged skull in the rain. 

Let us go as far as the wall of the graveyard, 
which time has caused to swell like a protu- 
berance on the side of the park, and which is 
so providentially close at hand. 

The old Chateau looms, a stately mass, 
through the shadows. To-night, lamps are 
gleaming softly in every window. It looks 
like a silent, illuminated ship, the prow of 
which is cutting through an ice-bank. Noth- 
ing emerges from it but this quiet light. Noth- 
ing reveals the nature of its terrible freight. 

We know that in every room, in every 
storey, on the level of every floor, young 
mutilated bodies are ranged side by side. A 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 187 

hundred hearts send the over-heated blood in 
swift pulsations towards the suffering limbs. 
Through all these bodies the projectile in its 
furious course made its way, crushing deli- 
cate mechanisms, rending the precious organs 
which make us take pleasure in walking, breath- 
ing, drinking. . . . 

Up there, this innocent joy of order no 
longer exists; and in order to recapture it, a 
hundred bodies are performing labours so 
slow and hard that they call forth tears and 
sighs from the strongest. 

But how the murmurs of this centre of 
suffering are muffled by the walls! How si- 
lently and darkly it broods in space! 

Like a dressing on a large inflamed wound, 
the Chateau covers its contents closely, and one 
sees nothing but these lamps, just such lamps 
as might illuminate a studious solitude, or a 
conversation between intimate friends at eve- 
ning, or a love lost in self-contemplation. 

We are now walking through thickets of 
spindle-wood, resplendent under the snow, and 
the indifference of these living things to the 
monstrous misery round them makes the 
impotent soul that is strangling me seem 



188 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

odious and even ridiculous to me. In spite 
of all protestations of sympathy, the mortal 
must always suffer alone in his flesh, and this 
indeed is why war is possible. . . . 

Philippe here thinks perhaps as I do; but 
he and I have these thoughts thrust on us in the 
same pressing fashion. Men who are sleeping 
twenty paces from this spot would be wakened 
by a cry; yet they are undisturbed by this for- 
midable presence, inarticulate as a mollusc in 
the depths of the sea. 

In despair, I stamp on the soft snow with 
my sabot. The winter grass it covers subsists 
obstinately, and has no solidarity with any- 
thing else on earth. Let the pain of man 
wear itself out; the grass will not wither. 
Sleep, good folks of the whole world. Those 
who suffer here will not disturb your rest. 

And suddenly, beyond the woods a rocket 
rises and bursts against the sky, brilliant as a 
meteor. It means something most certainly, 
and it warns some one; but its coarse in- 
genuity does not deceive me. No barbarous 
signal such as this could give me back con- 
fidence in my soul to-night. 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 189 

II 

The little room adjoining the closet where 
I sleep has been set apart for those whose 
cries or effluvia make them intolerable to the 
rest. As it is small and encumbered, it will 
only admit a single stretcher, and men are 
brought in there to die in turn. 

But lately, when the Chateau was reigning 
gracefully in the midst of verdure, the centre 
of the great star of alleys piercing its groves 
of limes and beeches, its owners occasionally 
entertained a brilliant society; and if they 
had under their roof some gay and lovely milk- 
white maiden, they gave her this little room at 
the summit of the right wing, whence the sun 
may be seen rising above the forests, to dream, 
and sleep, and adorn herself in. 
■ To-day, the fagade of the Chateau seems to 
be listening, strained and anxious, to the 
cannonade; and the little room has become a 
death-chamber. 

Madelan was the first we put there. He 
was raving in such a brutal and disturbing 
manner, in spite of the immobility of his long, 



190 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
paralysed limbs, that his companions implored 
us to remove him. I think Madelan neither 
understood nor noticed this isolation, for he 
was already given over to a deeper solitude; 
but his incessant vociferation, after he was 
deprived of listeners, took on a strange and 
terrible character. 

For four days and four nights, he never 
ceased talking vehemently; and listening to 
him, one began to think that all the life of the 
big body that was already dead, had fled in 
frenzy to his throat. For four nights I heard 
him shouting incoherent, elusive things, which 
seemed to be replies to some mysterious in- 
terlocutor. 

At dawn, and from hour to hour throughout 
the day, I went to see him where he sprawled 
on a paillasse on the floor, like some red-haired 
stricken beast, with out-stretched limbs, con- 
vulsed by spasms which displaced the dirty 
blanket that covered him. 

He lost flesh with such incredible rapidity 
that he seemed to be evaporating through 
the gaping wound in the nape of his neck. 

Then I would speak to him, saying things 
that were, kindly meant but futile, because 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 191 

conversation is impossible between a man who 
is being whirled along by the waters of a 
torrent, and one who is seated among the 
rushes on the bank. Madelan did not listen 
to me, and he continued his strange colloquy 
with the other. He did not want us or any 
one else; he had ceased to eat or to drink, 
and relieved himself as he lay, asking neither 
help nor tendance. 

One day, the wind blew the door of the room 
to, and there was no key to open it. A long 
ladder was put up to the window, and a pane 
of glass was broken to effect an entrance. 
Directly this was done, Madelan was heard, 
continuing his dream aloud. 

He died, and was at once replaced by the 
man with his skull battered in, of whom we 
knew nothing, because when he came to us 
he could neither see nor speak, and had 
nothing by way of history but a red and 
white ticket, as large as the palm of a child's 
hand. 

This man spent only one night in the room, 
filling the silence with painful eructations, and 
thumping on the partition which separated 
him from my bed. 



192 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Listening alertly, with the cold air from the 
open window blowing on my face, I heard in 
turn the crowing of the cocks in the village, 
the irregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping 
the sleep of exhaustion not far from me, and 
the blows and the death-rattle of the man who 
took so long to die. He became silent, how- 
ever, in the morning, when the wind began to 
drop, and the first detonation of the day 
boomed through the vault-like quiet of the 
darkness. 

Then we had as our neighbour the hospital 
orderly, Sergeant Gidel, who was nearing his 
end, and whose cruel hiccough we had been 
unable to alleviate for a week past. This man 
knew his business, he knew the meaning of 
probe, of fever, of hardened abdomen. He 
knew too that he had a bullet in the spinal 
cord. He never asked us for anything, and 
as we dared not tell him lies, we were overcome 
by a kind of shame in his presence. He 
stayed barely two days in the room, looking 
with dim eyes at the engravings on the walls, 
and the Empire bureau on which vases were 
piled. 

But what need is there to tell of all those 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 193 

whom this unhappy room swallowed up and 
ejected? 

Ill 

We have no lights this evening. . . . We 
must learn to do without them. ... I grope 
my way along the passages, where the wind is 
muttering, to the great staircase. Here there 
is a fitful lamp which makes one prefer the 
darkness. I see the steps, which are white 
and smeared with mud, pictures and tapestries, 
a sumptuous scheme of decoration flooded at 
the bottom by filth and desolation. As I 
approach the room where the wounded are 
lying, I hear the calm sound of their conversa- 
tion. I go in quietly. They cease talking; 
then they begin to chat again, for now they 
know me. 

At first one can only distinguish long forms 
ranged upon the ground. The stretchers seem 
to be holding forth with human voices. One 
of these is narrating: 

"We were all three sitting side by side . . . 
though I had told the adjutant that corner 
was not a good place. . . . They had just 
brought us a ration of soup with a little bit of 



194 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

meat that was all covered with white frost. 
Then bullets began to arrive by the dozen, and 
we avoided them as well as we could, and 
the earth flew about, and we were laughing, 
because we had an idea that among all those 
bullets there was not one that would find its 
billet. And then they stopped firing, and we 
came back to sit on the ledge. There were 
Chagniol and Due and I, and I had them both 
to the right of me. We began to talk about 
Giromagny, and about Danjoutin, because 
that's the district we all came from, and this 
went on for about half an hour. And then, 
all of a sudden, a bullet came, just a single one, 
but this time it was a good one. It went 
through Chagniol's head, then through Due's, 
and as I was a little taller than they, it only 
passed through my neck. . . ." 

"And then?" 

"Then it went off to the devil! Chagniol 
fell forward on his face. Due got up, and ran 
along on all fours as far as the bend in the 
trench, and there he began to scratch out the 
earth like a rabbit, and then he died. The 
blood was pouring down me right and left, 
and I thought it was time for me to go. I set 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 195 

off running, holding a finger to each side of 
my neck, because of the blood. I was think- 
ing: just a single bullet! It's too much! 
It was really a mighty good one! And then 
I saw the adjutant. So I said to him: 'I 
warned you, mon adjutant, that that corner 
was not a good place!' But the blood rushed 
up into my mouth, and I began to run again." 

There was a silence, and I heard a voice 
murmur with conviction: 

"You were jolly lucky, weren't you?" 

Mulet, too, tells his story: 

"They had taken our fire . . . 'That's not 
your fire,' I said to him. 'Not our fire?' he 
said. Then the other came up and he said: 
'Hold your jaw about the fire . . .' 'It's not 
yours,' I said. Then he said: 'You don't know 
who you're talking to.' And he turned his 
cap, which had been inside out . . . 'Ah ! I 
beg your pardon,' I said, 'but I could not 
tell . . .' And so they kept our fire. . . ." 

Maville remarks calmly: "Yes, things like 
that will happen sometimes." 

Silence again. The tempest shakes the 
windows with a furious hand. The room is 
faintly illuminated by a candle which has St. 



196 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
Vitus' dance. Rousselot, our little orderly, 
knits away industriously in the circle of light. 
I smoke a pipe at once acrid and consoling, 
like this minute itself in the midst of the 
infernal adventure. 

Before going away, I think of Croquelet, 
the silent, whose long silhouette I see at the 
end of the room. "He sleeps all the time," 
says Mulet, "he sleeps all day." I approach 
the stretcher, I bend over it, and I see two 
large open eyes, which look at me gravely and 
steadily in the gloom. And this look is so 
sad, so poignant, that I am filled with im- 
potent distress. 

"You sleep too much, my poor Croquelet." 
He answers me with his rugged accent, but 
in a feeble voice: 

"Don't listen to him; it's not true. You 
know quite well that I can't sleep, and that 
you won't give me a draught to let me get a 
real nap. This afternoon, I read a little. . . . 
But it wasn't very interesting. ... If I could 
have another book. . . ." 

"Show me your book, Croquelet." 
He thrusts out his chin towards a little tract. 
I strike a match, and I read on the grey 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 1971 

cover: "Of the Quality of Prayers addressed 
to God." 

"All right, Croquelet, I'll try to get you a 
book with pictures in it. How do you feel 
this evening?" 

"Ah! bad! very bad! They're thawing 
now. . . ." 

He has had frost-bite in his feet, and is be- 
ginning to suffer so much from them that he 
forgets the wound in his side, which is mortal, 
but less active. 

IV 

I have come to take refuge among my 
wounded to smoke in peace, and meditate in 
the shadow. Here, the moral atmosphere is 
pure. These men are so wretched, so utterly 
humiliated, so absorbed in their relentless suf- 
ferings that they seem to have relinquished 
the burden of the passions in order to con- 
centrate their powers on the one endeavour: 
to live. 

In spite of their solidarity they are for the 
time isolated by their individual sufferings. 
Later on, they will communicate; but this is 
the moment when each one contemplates his 



198 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

own anguish, and fights his own battle, with 
cries of pain. . . . 

They are all my friends. I will stay among 
them, associating myself with all my soul in 
their ordeal. 

Perhaps here I shall find peace. Perhaps 
all ignoble discord will call a truce on the 
threshold of this empire. 

But a short distance from us the battle-field 
has thundered unceasingly for days. Like a 
noisy, complicated mechanism which turns out 
the products of its internal activity, the stu- 
pid machine of war throws out, from min- 
ute to minute, bleeding men. We pick them 
up, and here they are, swathed in bandages. 
They have been crushed in the twinkling 
of an eye; and now we shall have to ask 
months and years to repair or palliate the 
damage. 

How silent they are this evening! And 
how it makes one's heart ache to look at them ! 
Here is Bourreau, with the brutal name and 
the gentle nature, who never utters a complaint, 
and whom a single bullet has deprived of 
sight for ever. Here is Bride, whom we fear 
to touch, so covered is he with bandages, but 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 199 

who looks at us with touching, liquid eyes, 
his mind already wandering. Here is Lerouet, 
who will not see next morning dawn over the 
pine-trees, and who has a gangrened wound 
near his heart. And the others, all of whom I 
know by their individual misfortunes. 

How difficult it is to realise what they were, 
all these men who a year ago, were walking 
in streets, tilling the land, or writing in an 
office. Their present is too poignant. Here 
they lie on the ground, like some fair work of 
art defaced. Behold them! The creature 
par excellence has received a great outrage, 
an outrage it has wrought upon itself. 

We are ignorant of their past. But have 
they a future? I consider these innocent 
victims in the tragic majesty of the hour, and 
I feel ashamed of living and breathing freely 
among them. 

Poor, poor brothers! What could one do 
for you which would not be insufficient, un- 
worthy, mediocre? We can at least give up 
everything and devote ourselves heart and 
soul to our holy and exacting work. 

But no ! round the beds on which your 
solitary drama is enacted, men are still taking 



200 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

part in a sinister comedy. Every kind of 
folly, the most ignoble and also the most 
imbecile passions, pursue their enterprises and 
their satisfactions over your heads. 

Neither the four corpses we buried this 
morning, nor your daily agonies will disarm 
these appetites, suspend these calculations, and 
destroy these ambitions the development and 
fruition of which even your martyrdom may 
be made to serve. 



I will spend the whole evening among my 
wounded, and we will talk together, gently, 
of their misery; it will please them, and they 
will make me forget the horrible atmosphere 
of discussion that reigns here. 

Alas! during the outburst of the great ca- 
tastrophe, seeing the volume of blood and 
fire, listening to the uproar, smelling the 
stench of the vast gangrene, we thought that 
all passions would be laid aside, like cumber- 
some weapons, and that we should give our- 
selves up with clean hearts and empty hands 
to battle against the fiery nightmare. He who 
fights and defends himself needs a pure heart: 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 201 

so does he who wanders among charnel 
houses, gives drink to parched lips, washes 
fevered faces and bathes wounds. We 
thought there would be a great forgetfulness 
of self and of former hopes, and of the whole 
world. O Union of pure hearts to meet the 
ordeal ! 

But no! The first explosion was tre- 
mendous, yet hardly had its echoes died away 
when the rag-pickers were already at work 
among the ruins, in quest of cutlet-bones and 
waste paper. 

And yet, think of the sacred anguish of 
those first hours! 



Well, so be it! For my part, I will stay 
here, between these stretchers with their bur- 
dens of anguish. 

At this hour one is inclined to distrust 
everything, man and the universe, and the 
future of Right. But we cannot have any 
doubts as to the suffering of man. It is the 
one certain thing at this moment. 

So I will stay and drink in this sinister 
testimony. And each time that Beal, who 



202 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

has a gaping wound in the stomach, holds out 
his hands to me with a little smile, I will get 
up and hold his hands in mine, for he is 
feverish, and he knows that my hands are 
always icy. 



Bride is dead. We had been working all 
day, and in the evening we had to find time to 
go and bury Bride. 

It is not a very long ceremony. The 
burial-ground is near. About a dozen of us 
follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and 
stumbling over the graves. Here we are at 
the wall, and here is the long ditch, always 
open, which every day is prolonged a little to 
the right, and filled in a little to the left. Here 
is the line of white crosses, and the flickering 
shadows on the wall caused by the lantern. 

The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, 
and lower the body, disputing in undertones, 
for it is not so easy as one might think to be 
a grave-digger. One must have the knack of 
it. And the night is very dark and the mud 
very sticky. 

At last the body is at the bottom of the 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 203 

trench, and the muddy ropes are withdrawn. 
The little consumptive priest who stands at 
the graveside murmurs the prayer for the 
dead. The rain beats in our faces. The 
familiar demon of Artois, the wind, leaps 
among the ancient trees. The little priest 
murmurs the terrible words: Dies irae f dies 
ilia. . . . 

And this present day is surely the day of 
wrath ... I too utter my prayer: "In the 
name of the unhappy world, Bride, I remit all 
thy sins, I absolve thee from all thy faults! 
Let this day, at least, be a day of rest." 

The little priest stands bare-headed in the 
blast. An orderly who is an ecclesiastic holds 
the end of an apron over his head. A man 
raises the lantern to the level of his eye. And 
the rain-drops gleam and sparkle furtively. 

Bride is dead. . . . 

Now we meet again in the little room where 
friendship reigns. 

Pierre and Jacques, gallant fellows, I shall 
not forget your beautiful, painful smile at the 
moment which brings discouragement to the 
experienced man. I shall not forget. 

The beef and rice, which one needs to be 



204 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

very hungry to swallow, is distributed. And a 
gentle cheerfulness blossoms in the circle of 
lamplight, a cheerfulness which tries to catch 
something of the gaiety of the past. Man has 
such a deep-seated need of joy that he im- 
provises it everywhere, even in the heart of 
misery. 

And suddenly, through the steam of the 
soup, I see Bride's look distinctly. 

It was no ordinary look. The extremity of 
suffering, the approach of death, perhaps, and 
also the hidden riches of his soul, gave it 
extraordinary light, sweetness, and gentleness. 
When one came to his bedside, and bent over 
him, the look was there, a well-spring of re- 
freshment. 

But Bride is dead: we saw his eyes trans- 
formed into dull, meaningless membranes. 

Where is that well-spring? Can it be 
quenched? 

Bride is dead. Involuntarily, I repeat 
aloud: "Bride is dead." 

Have I roused a responsive echo in these 
sympathetic souls? A religious silence falls 
upon them. The oldest of all problems comes 
and takes its place at the table like a familiar 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 205 

guest. It breathes mysteriously into every 
ear: "Where is Bride? Where is Bride's 
look?" 

VI 

A lantern advances, swinging among the 
pines. Who is coming to meet us? 

Philippe recognises the figure of Monsieur 
Julien. Here is the man, indeed, with his 
porter's livery, and his base air as of an 
insolent slave. He waves a stable-lantern 
which throws grotesque shadows upwards on 
his face; and he is obviously furious at having 
been forced to render a service. 

He brandishes the lantern angrily, and 
thrusts out his chin to show us the advancing 
figures: two men are carrying a stretcher on 
which lies a big body wrapped in a coarse 
winding sheet. The two men are weary, and 
set the stretcher down carefully in the mud. 

"IsitFumat?" 

u Yes. He has just died, very peacefully." 

"Where are you going?" 

"There is no place anywhere for a corpse. 
So we are taking him to the chapel in the 
burial-ground. But he is heavy." 



206 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

"We will give you a hand." 

Philippe and I take hold of the stretcher. 
The men follow us in silence. The body is 
heavy, very heavy. We drag our sabots out 
of the clay laboriously. And we walk slowly, 
breathing hard. 

How heavy he is! . . . He was called 
Fumat . . . He was a giant. He came from 
the mountains of the Centre, leaving a red- 
tiled village on a hill-side, among juniper- 
bushes and volcanic boulders. He left his 
native place with its violet peaks and strong 
aromatic scents and came to the war in Artois. 
He was past the age when men can march to 
the attack, but he guarded the trenches and 
cooked. He received his death-wound while 
he was cooking. The giant of Auvergne was 
peppered with small missiles. He had no 
wound at all proportionate to his huge body. 
Nothing but splinters of metal. Once again, 
David has slain Goliath. 

He was two days dying. He was asked: 
"Is there anything you would like?" And 
he answered with white lips: "Nothing, 
thank you." When we were anxious and 
asked him "How do you feel?" he was 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 207 

always quite satisfied. "I am getting on very 
well." He died with a discretion, a modesty, 
a self-forgetf ulness which redeemed the ego- 
tism of the universe. 

How heavy he is! He was wounded as he 
was blowing up the fire for the soup. He did 
not die fighting. He uttered no historic word. 
He fell at his post as a cook. . . . He was 
not a hero. 

You are not a hero, Fumat. You are only a 
martyr. And we are going to lay you in the 
earth of France, which has engulfed a noble 
and innumerable army of martyrs. 

The shadow of the trees sweeps like a huge 
sickle across space. An acrid smell of cold 
decay rises on the night. The wind wails its 
threnody for Fumat. 

"Open the door, Monsieur Julien." 

The lout pushes the door, grumbling to 
himself. We lay the body on the pavement of 
the chapel. 

Renaud covers the corpse carefully with a 
faded flag. And suddenly, as if to celebrate 
the moment, the brutal roar of guns comes to 
us from the depths of the woods, breaks 
violently into the chapel, seizes and rattles 



208 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

the trembling window-panes. A hundred 
times over, a whole nation of cannon yells in 
honour of Fumat. And each time other 
Fumats fall in the mud yonder, in their 
appointed places. 

VII 

They ought not to have cut off all the light 
in this manner, and it would not have been 
done, perhaps, if . . . 

There is a kind of mania for organisation 
which is the sworn enemy of order; in its 
efforts to discover the best place for every- 
thing, it ends by diverting everything from its 
right function and locality, and making every- 
thing as inopportune as itself. It was a 
mistake to cut off all the lights this evening, 
on some pretext or the other. The rooms of 
the old mansion are not packed with bales 
of cotton, but with men who have anxious 
minds and tortured bodies. 

A mournful darkness suddenly; reigned; 
and outside, the incessant storm that rages in 
this country swept along like a river in spate. 

Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 209 

light of the lamp, with hands crossed on his 
breast, and the delicate profile of an exhausted 
saint. 

He was dreaming of vague and exquisite 
things, for cruel fever has moments of gene- 
rosity between two nightmares. He was 
dreaming so sweetly that he forgot the abomin- 
able stench of his body, and that a smile 
touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners 
of his mouth, set there by a week of agony. 

But all the lamps have been put out, 
and the noise of the hurricane has become 
more insistent, and the wounded have ceased 
talking, for darkness discourages conversa- 
tion. 

There are some places where the men with 
whom the shells have dealt mercifully and 
whose wounds are only scratches congregate. 
These have only the honour of wounds, and 
what may be called their delights. . . . But 
here, we have only the worst cases; and here 
they have to await the supreme decision of 
death. 

Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of 
darkness and despair. He heard nothing but 
laboured breathing round him, and rising 



210 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

above it all, the violent breath of the storm. 
He was suddenly conscious of his lacerated 
stomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that 
the fetid smell in the air was the smell of his 
flesh. And he thought of the loving letter he 
had received in the morning from his four big 
sisters with glossy hair, he thought of all his 
lost, ravished happiness. . . . 

Renaud hurries up, groping his way among 
the dark ambushes of the corridor. 

"Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has 
thrown himself out of bed." 

Holding up a candle, I take in the melan- 
choly scene. We have to get Rochet into bed 
again, readjust his bandages, wipe up the 
fetid liquid spilt on the floor. 

Rochet's lips are compressed. I stoop to 
his ear and ask softly: 

"Why did you do this?" 

His face remains calm, and he answers 
gently, looking me full in the eyes: "I want 
to die." 

I leave the room, disarmed, my head bowed, 
and go in search of Monet, who is a priest and 
an excellent orderly. He is smoking a pipe 
in a corner. He has just had news that his 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 211 

young brother has been killed in action, and 
he had snatched a few minutes of solitude. 

"Monet," I say, "I think Rochet is a be- 
liever. Well, go to him. He may want you." 

Monet puts away his pipe, and goes off 
noiselessly. 

As to me, I go and wander about outside. 
On the poplar-lined road, in company with the 
furious rain and the darkness, I shall perhaps 
be able to master the flood of bitterness that 
sweeps over me. 

At the end of an hour, my anxiety brings me 
back to Rochet's bedside. The candle is 
burning away with a steady flame. Monet is 
reading in a little book with a clasp. The 
profile of the wounded man has still the pitiful 
austerity of a tortured saint. 

"Is he quieter now?" 

Monet lifts his fine dark eyes to my face, 
and drops his book. 

"Yes. He is dead." 



VIII 

Why has Hell been painted as a place of 
hopeless torture and eternal lamentation? 



212 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

I believe that even in the lowest depths of 
Hell, the damned sing, jest, and play cards. 
I am led to imagine this after seeing these men 
rowing in their galleys, chained to them by 
fever and wounds. 

Blaireau, who has only lost a hand, preludes 
in an undertone: 

Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur. . . . 

This timid breath kindles the dormant 
flame. Houdebine, who has a fractured 
knee, but who now expects to be fairly 
comfortable till the morning, at once responds 
and continues: 

Marguerite! Marguerite! 

The two sing in unison, with delighted 
smiles : 

Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur 
Marguerite! Marguerite! 

Maville joins in at the second verse, and 
even Legras, whose two legs are broken, and 
the Chasseur Alpin, who has a hole in his 
skull. 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 213 

Panchat, the man who had a bullet through 
his neck, beats time with his finger, because 
he is forbidden to speak. 

All this goes on in low tones; but faces 
light up, and flush, as if a bottle of brandy had 
been passed round. 

Then Houdebine turns to Panchat and 
says: "Will you have a game of dummy 
manilla, Panchat?" 

Dummy manilla is a game for two ; and they 
have to be content with games for two, 
because no one in this ward can get up, and 
communication is only easy for those in 
adjacent beds. 

Panchat makes a sign of consent. Why 
should he not play dummy manilla, which is a 
silent game. A chair is put between the two 
beds, and he shuffles the cards. 

The cards are so worn at the corners that 
they have almost become ovals. The court 
cards smile through a fog of dirt; and to 
deal, one has to wet one's thumb copiously, 
because a thick, tenacious grease makes 
the cards stick together in an evil-smelling 
mass. 

But a good deal of amusement is still to be 



214 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
got out of these precious bits of old paste- 
board. 

Panchat supports himself on his elbow, 
Houdebine has to keep on his back, be- 
cause of his knee. He holds his cards 
against his chin, and throws them down 
energetically on the chair with his right 
hand. 

The chair is rather far off, the cards are 
dirty, and sometimes Houdebine asks his 
silent adversary: "What's that?" 

Panchat takes the card and holds it out at 
arm's length. 

Houdebine laughs gaily. 

He plays his cards one after the other, and 
dummy's hand also: 

"Trump! Trump! Trump! And ace of 
hearts !" 

Even those who cannot see anything laugh 
too. 

Panchat is vexed, but he too laughs noise- 
lessly. Then he takes out the lost sou from 
under his straw pillow. 

Meanwhile, Mulet is telling a story. It is 
always the same story, but it is always in- 
teresting. 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 215 

An almost imperceptible voice, perhaps 
Legras', hums slowly: 

Si tu veux fair* mon bonheur. 



Who talks of happiness here? 

I recognise the accents of obstinate, gener- 
ous life. I recognise thine accents, artless 
flesh ! Only thou couldst dare to speak of hap- 
piness between the pain of the morning and 
that of the evening, between the man who is 
groaning on the right, and the man who is 
dying on the left. 

Truly, in the utmost depths of Hell, the 
damned must mistake their need of joy for 
joy itself. 

I know quite well that there is hope here. 

So that in hell too there must be hope. 



IX 

But lately, Death was the cruel stranger, 
the stealthy-footed visitor. . . . Now, it is 
the romping dog of the house. 

Do you remember the days when the human 



216 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 
body seemed made for joy, when each of its 
organs represented a function and a delight? 
Now, each part of the body evokes the evil 
that threatens it, and the special suffering it 
engenders. 

Apart from this, it is well adapted for its 
part in the laborious drama : the foot to carry 
a man to the attack; the arm to work the 
cannon; the eye to watch the adversary or 
adjust the weapon. 

But lately, Death was no part of life. We 
talked of it covertly. Its image was at once 
painful and indecent, calculated to upset the 
plans and projects of existence. It worked 
as far as possible in obscurity, silence and 
retirement. We disguised it with symbols; 
we announced it in laborious paraphrases, 
marked by a kind of shame. 

To-day Death is closely bound up with the 
things of life. And this is true, not so much 
because its daily operations are on a vast 
scale, because it chooses the youngest and the 
healthiest among us, because it has become 
a kind of sacred institution, but more espe- 
cially because it has become a thing so ordinary 
that it no longer causes us to suspend our 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 217 

usual activities, as it used to do: we eat and 
drink beside the dead, we sleep amidst the 
dying, we laugh and sing in the company of 
corpses. 

And how, indeed, can it be otherwise? You 
know quite well that man cannot live without 
eating, drinking, and sleeping, nor without 
laughing and singing. 

Ask all those who are suffering their hard 
Calvary here. They are gentle and courage- 
ous, they sympathise with the pain of others; 
but they must eat when the soup comes 
round, sleep, if they can, during the long 
night; and try to laugh again when the ward 
is quiet, and the corpse of the morning has 
been carried out. 

Death remains a great thing, but one with 
which one's relations have become frequent and 
intimate. Like the king who shows himself 
at his toilet, Death is still powerful, but it has 
become familiar and slightly degraded. 

Lerouet died just now. We closed his eyes, 
tied up his chin, then pulled out the sheet to 
cover the corpse while it was waiting for the 
stretcher-bearers. 

"Can't you eat anything?" said Mulet to 



218 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

Maville. Maville, who is very young and shy, 
hesitates: "I can't get it down." 

And after a pause, he adds: "I can't bear 
to see such things." 

Mulet wipes his plate calmly and says: 
"Yes, sometimes it used to take away my 
appetite too, so much so that I used to be 
sick. But I have got accustomed to it 



now." 



Pouchet gulps down his coffee with a sort 
of feverish eagerness. 

"One feels glad to get off with the loss of a 
leg when one sees that." 

"One must live," adds Mulet. 

"Well, for all the pleasure one gets out of 
life. . . ." 

Beliard is the speaker. He had a bullet in 
the bowel, yet we hope to get him well soon. 
But his whole attitude betrays indifference. 
He smokes a great deal, and rarely speaks. 
He has no reason to despair, and he knows 
that he can resume his ordinary life. But 
familiarity with Death, which sometimes 
makes life seem so precious, occasionally ends 
by producing a distaste for it, or rather a deep 
weariness of it. 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 219 



X 

A whole nation, ten whole nations are 
learning to live in Death's company. Hu- 
manity has entered the wild beast's cage, and 
sits there with the patient courage of the 
lion-tamer. 

Men of my country, I learn to know you 
better every day, and from having looked you 
in the face at the height of your sufferings, I 
have conceived a religious hope for the future 
of our race. It is mainly owing to my ad- 
miration for your resignation, your native 
goodness, your serene confidence in better 
times to come that I can still believe in the 
moral future of the world. 

At the very hour when the most natural 
instinct inclines the world to ferocity, you 
preserve, on your beds of suffering, a beauty, 
a purity of outlook which goes far to atone 
for the monstrous crime. Men of France, your 
simple grandeur of soul redeems humanity 
from its greatest crime, and raises it from its 
deep abyss. 

We are told how you bear the misery of the 



220 THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS 

battle-field, how in the discouraging cold and 
mud, you await the hour of your cruel duty, 
how you rush forward to meet the mortal 
blow, through the unimaginable tumult of 
peril. 

But when you come here, there are further 
sufferings in store for you; and I know with 
what courage you endure them. 

The doors of the Chateau close on a new life 
for you, a life that is also one of perpetual 
peril and contest. I help you in this contest, 
and I see how gallantly you wage it. 

Not a wrinkle in your faces escapes me. 
Not one of your pains, not one of the tremors 
of your lacerated flesh. And I write them all 
down, just as I note your simple words, your 
cries, your sighs of hope, as I also note the 
expression of your faces at the solemn hour 
when man speaks no more. 

Not one of your words leaves me unmoved; 
there is not one of your actions which is not 
worthy of record. All must contribute to the 
history of our great ordeal. 

For it is not enough to give oneself up to the 
sacred duty of succour. It is not enough to 
apply the beneficent knife to the wound, or 



NIGHTS IN ARTOIS 221 

to change the dressings skilfully and care- 
fully. 

It is also my mission to record the history 
of those who have been the sacrificial victims 
of the race, without gloss, in all its truth and 
simplicity; the history of the men you have 
shown yourselves to be in suffering. 

If I left this undone, you would, no doubt, 
be cured as perfectly, or would perish none 
the less; but the essence of the majestic lesson 
would be lost, the most splendid elements of 
your courage would remain barren. 

And I invite all the world to bow before you 
with the same attentive reverence, with hearts 
that forget nothing. 

Union of pure hearts to meet the ordeal! 
Union of pure hearts that our country may 
know and respect herself! Union of pure 
hearts for the redemption of the stricken 
world! 



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